Running Anxiety

There is a lot of anxiety run riot in the world right now. It is everywhere and is about pretty much everything. The world has entered uncharted territory and we are uncertain of where our lives or our world are going. Uncertainty often produces anxiety. Problem is, thinking about anxiety makes us anxious.

Many of us are so used to living with it, that we don’t give it a lot of thought. It is kind of there in the background but, hey, it’s only anxiety. We get used to the feelings of unease, apprehension, nervousness. “I’m just feeling a little out of sorts or off center or I’ve got things on my mind but it is no big deal.” Actually, yes, it is.

Anxiety, left unanswered builds, suffocates you mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and eventually can destroy your health. “Come on. It’s not big deal and I’ll get to it later. I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. What’s a little jitters?” Now, as it is a big subject, we are going to start with how do you even know you are anxious? Right? If what I said is true, that we become so accustomed to it that we don’t realize that we are at sufferance of it, then how do we know?

My fave is food. Eating when I am not hungry. Many people call it stress eating. Standing in front of the open fridge at 3:30 AM grabbing out the fixin’s for a turkey and cheese sandwich. “Well, I was having trouble sleeping and I always sleep better with food on my stomach.” You feed your spouse their favorite meal and they’ve eaten until they nearly fell out but 30 minutes later they are rummaging through the pantry looking for a bag of chips because they are feeling peckish.  How is that even possible?

The presence of addictions – chemical or mechanical – are a sign that we are trying to run off anxiety. Chemical addictions whether food, booze, drugs, coffee, cigs, chocolate, sugar. That chocolate that you just gotta have. That cig before you commit murder. The food consumption that borders on or crosses over into binging. If I ate it fast, it didn’t count. If I didn’t enjoy it, it didn’t count. Needing to fill my mouth. Habituated chemical addictions as way of doing anxiety.

Mechanical addictions. The nail biters who will chew their own fingers down to their first knuckle. The hair twisters who aren’t even conscious of how much they do it. The jaw clenchers and grinders. I had a boss who clenched and unclenched her jaw all day, every day, regardless of what was going on around her. She was oblivious to it. My roommate in college who ground his teeth and jaw so ferociously every night that I could hear it from down the hall. The folks who can’t stop jiggling their leg, bouncing that knee up and down at ever increasing speeds. Running off anxiety.

Some people pick fights, usually about insignificant things. “How many times do I have to tell you to put the cap back on the toothpaste? It is unsanitary and messy. Can’t you ever respect my wishes? How come everything always has to be your way?” And off we go. One guy’s boyfriend came home and launched into a tirade about who knows what. When he was finished, the guy asked him, “So what has any of that got to do with me?” “Why can’t you ever listen to anything I tell you?” Usually they aren’t or you aren’t really even angry. Just looking to pick a fight to run off anxiety. And even though the fight usually starts over minor or inconsequential things, the person being attacked gets suckered in and will fight back and it can escalate and terrible things get said and emotional damage done and trust gets broken all because I was feeling anxious. Potentially throwing away a loving relationship to run off anxiety.

Another way many of us handle our anxiety is to worry about everything. Everything. Constantly. It can almost become obsessive. “Do my tires look worn to you? I am thinking that they are starting to wear out. Maybe I should go check them.” “Well, it’s dark outside right now and you just bought them six months ago so it is unlikely that they are about to give out.” “Did you see the rash in that commercial? Doesn’t that look just like this red spot on my elbow? My God, I better go get checked out for psoriasis.” “Your elbow is red because you’ve been leaning on it.” “Yeah, well, just in case.” What if the lunch meat in the kids’ sandwiches wasn’t stored properly? How many eggs are there in the fridge? I worry and I worry and I worry. Things will rotate on and off the checklist of things I worry about but by trying to be hyper-vigilant and aware, by worrying about everything, maybe I can keep the bad stuff at bay. Running my anxiety through worrying.

Some people turn into martyrs. You go to get your COVID vaccine and you even have an appointment and they not only keep you waiting but they take other people first. And you know that they deliberately did it to you. The server refills everybody else’s water glass except yours and you know it was premediated. The busybody at work who is so busy helping everybody else with their work that they can’t get their own done and then can’t understand why nobody appreciates all that they’ve done to help everybody else. “Nobody understands me. Nobody ever helps me. I guess I’ll just have to do it all myself,” followed with a heave and sigh. Martyring themselves as a way to distract from the anxiety they are feeling.

Some people go into depression. The weight of the depression gets so heavy that they can’t get out from under it. Not feeling “a little down” but really depressed and it can take weeks, months, years to escape the suffocation of the depression brought on by anxiety.

Others go into righteousness and blame. There is a lot of this out in the world right now. But it gets to the point of absurdity. “The world is going to hell in a handbasket because the rotten liberals are a bunch of satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles, blah, blah, blah.” It makes me mad because if I had known I was a cannibal, I could have saved a fortune at Kroger over the years.  In the 10,000 years of recorded human history blame has never solved anything. Accountability yes, blame no. But there is tons of blame in our world. And righteousness whose sole purpose is to make the righteous feel superior to and better than whomever is the object of their scorn. Running anxiety by blaming and being righteous.

And, finally, procrastination. The people who let the mail pile up for weeks or months but they’re gonna get to it. That closet that I’ve been meaning to clean out and sort through forever but I keep throwing stuff in there instead. That two minute phone call that I need to make for work but I can’t make it on Monday because they are just getting back to work and I don’t want to bother them. Then Tuesday comes and I’d call but they are just really getting back in the swing of things so I don’t want to be a nuisance. And on it goes and now it is Friday and the week is over so I’ll call next week. The bill I need to pay. Procrastination is how I do my anxiety.

If any of this sounds familiar, good. Because one of the steps of escaping being smothered by your anxiety is to know you have it and being aware of what you do to run it off. And then you can start looking for alternative, less destructive ways to express it.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Sensuousness

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“Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “Sensuous.” “Sensuous who?” “Sensuous up, would you bring me another soda out of the fridge?”

Sensuality is about feeling. I started thinking about it listening to a friend complain about how unsatisfying most of his online hookups were.  They were very mechanical but not much more. Certainly no feeling on any level other than physical. Sensation, yes, sensuality, no. Most people think of sensuality as something between two people but the sensuousness of life starts with self and our own experiences.

Life is full of sensuousness, if we will pay attention. Full of luscious, rich, sumptuous, exciting experience of feelings on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels. Once we understand what it is, then we can better share that understanding with others.

Think about the feeling of certain foods in your mouth. The taste of your favorite dish and how that resonates throughout your body and the satiation that can bring. When I was little, my favorite dinner was fried shrimp. I liked the crunch of the breading. Combined with flavor of the shrimp and either the kick of the cocktail sauce or the cool tanginess of the tartar sauce. All of that together gave me a feeling of pleasure and excitement because it was so good. Or, the warming sensation of a hot drink on a cold day. A cup of tea or coffee or hot chocolate soothing you as you drink it. There is also the added bonus of the caffeine helping you to feel more alert to the sensations of your body relaxing into the warmth. 

The feel of a breeze on a beautiful spring day as it gets inside your clothes and inflates them, making your skin tingle and feel refreshed. It can also refresh the mind and spirit if it has been a long winter and you are now free to go back outside and enjoy the freedom. The lightness you feel by not being weighed down by heavy winter clothes plus that rush of anticipation that you are about to take off with the wind.

The feeling of a friend’s hand on your shoulder that tells you you belong and are accepted just as you are and that you are alright. The sound of rain on a tin roof or the rustle of the wind through the trees that reminds you that nature can be soothing and healing.

Intimacy is not about the mechanics of sex. You’ve been watching too much porn. It is about the closeness, the tenderness, the vulnerability, and the trust between two people regardless of the specific nature of the relationship. The tenderness in the way we treat each other. How close we feel to each other. How willing we are to trust one another enough to be vulnerable with each another. All part of the sensuousness of life.

Thoughts and feelings are very sensual. Some people love drama and the way it makes them feel excited and alive. Other people hate drama. Some people like confrontation, others hate it. Some people love surprises. Other people hate surprises. Some people like spontaneity, others don’t. The sensations of life lived through our physical senses as well as our mind and emotions. Though they all seem something that just happens on the surface, all of these feelings, that rush of sensuousness takes us someplace deeper into our psyche, somewhere outside of time and space, giving our momentary experience a richness and texture and meaning that physical sensation alone can’t provide.

But there is also the sensuality of your spirituality. Our lives are constantly sending us messages with feelings that provide context and texture. A song we hear in passing on the radio that has a message we needed to hear at the moment. A passage we read in a book that is timely. A conversation we overhear. A chance meeting. An unexpected good fortune where something just arrives out of the blue. A feeling that won’t leave us alone. A thought that urges us forward or warns us to stop. A coincidence where – “Hey, I was just thinking about you and here you are.” A synchronicity where something worked out perfectly though it wasn’t planned at all. “Yeah, well, it was just luck or fate or chance.” Are you sure?

“Stop and smell the roses,” we are told when we feel too stressed or overwhelmed. We all live in a world that now prides itself on being so busy all the time that we need to be plugged in 24/7. We are constantly distracted from our own life and the cornucopia of sensual pleasures it affords us every minute of every day.

Sensuousness is about connection on an unspoken level. It happens between the words used to describe it and beyond those words. It is experiential through the five common senses, and through the senses you possess like intuition and knowing and warmth that lie beyond the familiar ones. It opens you to the transcendent where in a moment, and maybe only for a moment, you are lifted beyond time/space where you can touch and be touched by something more than what words can describe. A sensual experience – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual - between two people can end the sense of separateness and/or alienation, leading to a sense that approaches oneness whether with partners, family or friends. Your work, your creative projects, your hopes and dreams all are sources of and all benefit from sensuousness.

Put down your phone. Open your senses. What are the smells, touches, tastes, sounds, sights, that your life is providing you with? Where do the accompanying thoughts and feelings take you? Do you find inspiration or hope or beauty or peace? Maybe a sense of well-being or contentment. Gratitude. Pleasure. Excitement.  Life is a very lush experience. But you’ve got to be paying attention or those experiences will slip on by and you’ll be left wondering, just like my friend, why is this all so mechanical and rote? It’s not. But do you dare to find out?

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media 

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Authenticity

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Years ago, before Abercrombie & Fitch lost their minds, they used to sew patches onto their clothes that read: “A F (Original), Expert Quality, Guaranteed Durability, Genuine Performance,” and the year it was made, “Issue No. 1993” This patch was evidence of the garment’s authenticity. They had other versions of this on various labels, depending on the garment.

Dictionary.com defines authentic as - 1) not false or copied; genuine; real; 2) having an origin supported by unquestionable evidence; authenticated; verified; 3) representing one’s true nature or beliefs; true to oneself or to the person identified.

Given the above definition and demonstration of the use of the word, imagine my surprise when I read, in Esquire Magazine, an article entitled, “Meet One of the Most Popular Men on Tinder.” The article begins with the advice from a popular figure on Tinder who states that in the first pic of your profile, you have to be strategic about your smile. A closed mouth implies one negative thing and too wide a grin implies something else negative. The article states, regarding your smile, “Display the faintest whiff of inauthenticity and you’re done for.”

Well, wrong. Who makes up these rules? If you were actually being legitimate about it, you would display your natural smile and not some contrived version meant to send a signal that hopefully everyone knows how to interpret. And, if your eyes are your nicest feature, show them off instead. Just sayin’. Appearances have nothing to do with authenticity. You have all heard the old saying not to judge a book by its cover, and if you have ever read a book, you know that to be true. Appearance may be important as to the level of physical/sexual attractiveness, but otherwise, as they say, beauty is only skin deep.

The article then goes on to tout the wisdom of presenting a very sparse profile (4 items per category). This is fine unless you are not a sparse person and, thus, your brevity is a misleading representation of who you actually are. Suppose you are gregarious or funny or collegial or very extroverted and sparseness doesn’t really represent you? So much for realness. And if you are only allowed 4 photos, 4 interests, a 4 word bio, how credible can you really be?

Authenticity is a word that currently gets thrown around a lot. I see it on LinkedIn and in various “How to Job Hunt” articles that warn that you’d better be authentic in the process even though, as we spoke about in my previous post, you are also supposed to be a brand. And where are the official guidelines about how you do this in a resume? Honesty is a good idea. Accuracy as to your work history is a good idea. But how can you be authentic if, in your interview, you go in prepared to play the game and bury who you really are?

Or supposed you are on a date and the subject of favorite sandwich comes up. Theirs is arugula and spirulina on gluten-free Naan bread and yours is, in reality, peanut butter and sardines on white bread? Do you dare tell the truth? What happens when they find out later? If that is actually your favorite, in being true to yourself and admitting that sandwich preference, then you are way more authentic than someone who goes with the trends or goes with the politically correct foodie way to eat.

Authenticity is about self-knowledge, character, principles, and integrity. It is about knowing who you are. What you think and feel and believe. It is about the things you do and don’t do well. It is about what you like and don’t like, and the people and places you like and don’t like. It is about knowing how honest you are with yourself, about everything, all of the time. It’s about knowing what you got right, what you got wrong, where you can improve and how you can and will do better tomorrow.

Authenticity is about having and developing character. Character means having ideals that you live by – dignity: wisdom; love; courage; balance; being of service to others; virtue; loyalty; creativity; responsibility; compassion; caring; gratitude; being understanding; always being respectful of others. These are not the only examples but ideals that we seek in the living of life. We don’t ever completely master these, never completely grasp them, but we become more in seeking their bounty. Principles are the things we will and will not do in seeking those ideals. As example, as much as I may love you I will seek the ideal of never ever consciously hurting you. That doesn’t mean, if I am having a bad day or am preoccupied or whatever, that I always will be fully present with you or that I won’t forget something you asked me to do or that I won’t say something without thinking it through that is hurtful. But I will seek the ideal of never deliberately, consciously, making the choice to be hurtful to you. Character is measured by how frequently, or not, you implement your principles.

Integrity is doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, even when no one is looking, and even when it is inconvenient. Integrity is living by my ideals and my ethics and morals. Integrity is keeping my word and keeping my commitments.

Authenticity will not be found by following someone else’s rules about who and what you are supposed to be. You have to make your own rules and live by them and deal with the consequences of those rules – revising them when necessary. Authenticity will not be found in your pics on social media, in getting the buzz words right, or trying to live your life by abiding by the decrees of influencers.  It will not be based on the number of social media friends or followers you have or in how many times you have been retweeted. It will be found in the depth that life calls on you to develop.

Sounds like a tall order. Right? It is. It is the work of a lifetime. Where can we begin? One the most authentic things we can do is to meet people where they are, let them be who they are, leave our judgments at home and practice being compassionate and understanding, and by being ourselves in all of our glory.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Branding & Self-Image

An abbreviated version of Branding & Self-Image was printed in the June 6, 2021 issue of Georgia Voice

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For more than 10 years, it has become a “thing” to think about and talk about oneself as a brand. You are encouraged to protect your brand and grow your brand and promote your brand, especially in regard to business relationships. I bring my brand and its services to your business, and I expect us to be on a more or less equal footing.

In addition to this being total bs, I find it deeply offensive and unhealthy. 

Brands refer to things like the brand of toothpaste you use or the mayonnaise you like. And when you are done with it, you throw out the old tube or jar and go buy a new one. Humans are neither disposable nor interchangeable. Humans are not things. We are complex, sentient beings and each of us is unique and multi-faceted. We are not a thing engaged in a series of transactions. The idea that all interactions are transactional, that we are each supposed to “get” something out of the transaction each and every time precludes the higher parts of our nature like altruism, compassion, understanding, caring, intimacy, even love.  

Back in the late 80s and early 90s we heard the idea that, especially in personal relationships, we were to become the right kind of product that “people would want to take off of the shelf.” Become the right product and you will succeed. People will want you. You’ll find the relationship or job you are looking for. 

I like the products I buy at the store. Whether bagged lettuce, nice shirts, comfy shoes, or sliced deli, I like and use certain products regularly. Is that the way I would want myself to be treated? A bought and paid for product that is then used by the purchaser however they see fit? “I got someone to take me off the shelf.” Well, that’s nice. Did you get to have any input into the transaction? Did it work out well? The problem herein is that people begin twisting and distorting who they are, or completely losing who they are, in order to be the “right” product or the right brand. Who sets these rules? When it comes to what the “right” product is, everybody will never all like or want the same thing(s). Right? Nevertheless, I am willing to lose myself to become a desired product.  

The right product/brand wears the right clothes, goes to the right places, knows the right people, watches the right TV shows, likes the right music, and has the right kind of thinking, whatever. No dissent or divergence or diversity of thought is tolerated. The danger here is that these things that we are supposed to do and be begin to warp our self-image. “Well, I’m a yoga pants wearing, paradigm-aware, synergy of best practices augmented and informed by my core competencies.” 

Heinz is a brand of ketchup. Tide is a brand of clothes detergent. Dial is a brand of soap. A brand is nothing more than the name of the maker of a product. The product has a very specific use but no matter how good the ketchup or the all-beef franks or the paper towels are, they are objects, things, and once used or consumed, I move on. Is this how you want the relationships in your life to be?  

My identity – what I do, what I say, what I think and what I feel. If my identity is that of a product or brand, then I am focusing only on what I need to do or be to please other people – professionally or personally. What this leaves out are important questions like - Who are you? What are you about? What really matters to you? What brings you joy? Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, who are you? Who are you becoming? What fulfills you? 

My self-image is about how I see myself. And that starts with the components of self-value. Self-awareness. Knowing who I am. Knowing my beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, decisions and choices. Giving myself a sense of agency in my own life, rather than being something that others use to fulfill their purposes. My self-worth, acknowledging and honoring my emotions and the complexity of them. My self-esteem, the esteem that I earn from myself. Self-love. When I learn to love myself, no one can take that away from me. Self-confidence, knowing that I can handle what life throws at me on a daily basis. These are some of the important things that influence and inform my image of myself. 

When I relate to other people, whether in a business, personal, or intimate relationship, I need to have a real good idea of who it is that I am asking them to relate to. If I have fallen into trying to be the right product or the right brand, then the potential trap here is I am letting others define who I am. I may be a good brand for making your teeth whiter and stronger but what about my own teeth? Problem with being a tube of toothpaste is that the tube never gets to refuse being squeezed. 

Self-image and self-identity are big and important issues in our lives and should not be trivialized. Yet in the “brand” way of thinking, that is exactly what we wind up doing to ourselves – trivializing ourselves. Why am I making an issue of this? Because next time we are going to talk about another popular buzzword circulating right now – authenticity. Product and brands don’t ever reach the level of authenticity. They may be good or bad quality. I may or may not like them. But they are only good for one purpose. They work or they don’t. We are all so much more than that. You are so much more than that. 

If you have to play the Brand Game at work, OK for now. But don’t let those narrow confines define who you are and are becoming.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media. 

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Carrying a Grudge

One of my all-time favorite refrigerator magnets is that of a well- dressed woman in evening clothes saying, “I would say my biggest strength is my ability to hold a grudge until the day I die.” (www.ephemera-inc.com) Makes me think of my maternal grandmother, whom I worshipped. She was famous for carrying grudges forever. Both of my parents were only children so any close family went back to aunts and uncles of my grandparents’ generation. I know very little about any of them because, for whatever reason, especially regarding my mother’s family, we didn’t talk to them – for decades. Why? Because my grandmother had a grudge against them that was carried as a badge of honor.

We all know people who carry grudges. We have all been guilty of it at some point in our lives. Why do we carry them? Because we believe that if we forgive the infraction that has precipitated the grievance, that doing so makes it alright. And we are bound and determined that it is never going to be alright. Ever. So forgiving it is not an option on the table.

But forgiving doesn’t mean that whatever happened is now OK. It’s not. But holding onto a resentment, feeling animosity, because of something that happened in the past keeps us locked in that past. Every time we think of it, we have to remind ourselves of what happened and feel those feelings all over again and again and again. It is almost as if we are punishing ourselves by making ourselves feel that bad once more.

Now, I am not talking about experiences like abuse of some sort, or when someone does something that has serious negative consequences for you, a loved one, your family or your life. I mean the more venal sins rather than the mortal ones. Someone says something untoward that you don’t like or agree with or that hurts you feelings. Someone blames you or a loved one for something that you had nothing to do with. They refuse to take responsibility for something they clearly need to. Someone tries to manipulate you or actually succeeds in manipulating you. Someone betrays a secret confidence or gossips about you behind your back. And you will be damned if you will forgive whatever it was.

Forgiving, as already stated, does not make what happened OK. It may never be OK, especially depending on the severity of the impact of the misdeed. But it does begin to let you off the hook. Think about it this way. The person who spends the most time in jail is the warden. Prisoners come and go over time but the warden is always there. Forgiving lets you out of prison. “Well, what about them? What about what they did? There should be consequences for them.”

You don’t have to forgive the what, but to let yourself out of prison, forgive the why. Why did they do what they did? You may know exactly why they did what they did. They always look for someone else to blame. They always like to feel sorry for themselves and try to manipulate others into feeling sorry for them as well. Or they never take responsibility for anything. Or they have this compulsive need to always be right. Or maybe, if they admit they have made a mistake, in their own mind, they are admitting that they are a mistake, and that is too hurtful for them to process. Or they just can’t resist gossip. They know it is wrong and destructive but they just can’t resist the siren’s call. Or you may never know exactly why they did what they did. Nevertheless, you can forgive the why.

Also, forgive yourself, as well, for it happening in your life, rather than an endless litany of self-recriminations. “I should have known when I looked into their beady little eyes that I should never had trusted them or been their friend or whatever.”

One other thing to keep in mind, are you sure they know why you hold this grudge? Are they really aware of their deeply felt offense? For example, maybe they were drunk when they did or said something that humiliated you and they don’t remember. Doesn’t make it alright. They are still responsible for their behavior and their actions.

Now the what. No. You don’t have to forgive that but you don’t have to keep reminding yourself of it either. Doesn’t mean you are going to kiss and make up. Doesn’t mean now you can go back to being besties. You can still walk away from them. They may not be someone you want in your life. They have been hurtful. They have shattered your trust. They have shown no compassion or remorse. This is not someone that you have to keep in your life. The glory is that by forgiving the why, you get to stop reliving it, walk away from it and be free of it.

Yes, there will still be times when friends or family or a store clerk or whomever pushes your buttons and it sends you into a fit of pique where you are mad as a wet hen. Someone crosses the line of one of your pet peeves and now they are going to be sorry. No one is asking you to become a saint. And yes, forgiveness is a much bigger topic than what is being addressed here but this is a good place to start.

Think about some of the things you have been holding on to that are well past their expiration date. Take some time with this. This is not about the clerk at the deli counter being short with you. When you find something of substance that you are willing to forgive and let go of and have thought about it, then, how do you feel about it? Angry? Hurt? Scared? Self-blame? A sense of loneliness or betrayal? These feelings could impede the forgiveness process if not recognized and acknowledged, processed and released. Listen to the parts of you that don’t want to forgive. There may be a part of you that feels forgiveness is weak. There may be a part of you that tells you that you don’t need to forgive. Pay attention to this process. The goal is to understand what you think and feel here.

Next step is to look at what can I learn from this? Beside the reason of wanting to let yourself out of prison, what can I learn about myself in this process? What lesson(s) can I take from this? And then forgive the why. Once the why is forgiven, you don’t have to have those feelings of anger or hurt or fear or self-blame around this issue any longer. You can now reclaim some of your power and strength and love and that was lost by holding on to not forgiving. But above all, you can be free.

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

The Geometry of Choice

An abbreviated version of The Geometry of Choice was printed in the May 7, 2021 issue of Georgia Voice

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Do you ever stop and think about the number of choices you make every single day? From the moment you open your eyes, you are choosing to do or not do something. How good are the choices you make? Do you ever stop to evaluate them? Are they good or bad or neutral? Further, when you make a bad or neutral one, does it register differently with you than when you make a good one? Do you take your good choices for granted? How about your bad and neutral ones?

Choices define a singular point in time. What will I have for breakfast? Will I get dressed up today or be casual? Do I need to go to the grocery store? Should I call my brother? Is it time to run the dishwasher? You get the point. It is a singular choice made at a certain point in time. We don’t usually pay a lot of attention to them because many of those that we make are habituated.

Habituated choices are those that have become automatic. I don’t consciously choose to feed the cat while my coffee is brewing. It is something I do every morning without thinking about it. I leave my keys in the same place all the time so I don’t have to think about where to leave my keys. I never let my gas tank go below half full so I just automatically turn into the gas station when the fuel indicator is at about ½ full. No thought involved. But in all of these examples, there is a choice made.

Then there are choices made around the initial choice. If I want to have coffee, how many cups do I think I want this morning? Do I want my usual Folgers or do I want one of Peet’s varieties? If I am going out to lunch, what kind of food do I feel like having? Which restaurant do I want to go to? These kinds of choices define the area around that initial determination of having coffee or going out to lunch. In geometry, the initial choice to go out, for example, would be a single point on the page. The rest of the choices about what kind of food, etc., supporting that initial decision define the area around it – Length X Width = Area.

Then there are the choices that define the space, the volume (length X width X depth) of our life in which all of those things happen. These are the fundamental choices that we make about ourselves, our beliefs, our emotions, other people, our relationships, our work, how we see rest of the world. They shape and mold, and in many cases, twist and distort the choices we make on a daily basis. They not only effect the individual ones that define a singular point in space and time but all the others we make around those individual choices. Here are some examples of the kinds of foundational choices we might make. And keep in mind, sometimes we make a number of fundamental decisions that come to define who we are and how we live our lives.

I am good enough. I am not good enough. I can forgive myself. I am unforgivable. I can trust myself. I can’t trust myself. I seek to be understanding of others. I only try to understand people who try to understand me first. Love heals. Love hurts. I can easily create successes. I have to struggle with everything. I can handle it when challenges arise. I have to control everything so there are no surprises. I can handle my feelings. I avoid my feelings. I am responsible for my life, the good and the bad. I get to blame everybody else for anything bad in my life. I get to decide what matters in my life. I let other people tell me what matters in life. People are basically good. People are selfish and rotten. The world is a friendly place. The world is a scary place.

As you can see, the list could be and is, indeed, endless. But let’s look at one example very quickly. Love hurts. I’ve made the fundamental choice to believe that. Thus I will believe that if I love, I am going to get hurt. I will have an attitude of wariness and mistrust of others, especially anyone I might decide to date.  I will want to control. I will potentially think love is too much work or is a struggle or is not worth it. Or, that I need to keep love at arms’ length so that, if I get hurt, it won’t hurt as badly. I feel scared or mistrustful or suspicious. I may decide to sabotage my relationships before I can really get hurt. All of this and more out of just one fundamental choice that love hurts. And that colors and taints all the others I make about dating or not, intimacy on any level - not just physical, the level of caring I am willing to have and show, how vulnerable I am or am not willing to be. All the many many choices contained within that volume, that cube, that world of mine are defined by that fundamental decision that love hurts.

It is always a good idea to review the choices we make. The simple, point-in-time ones and then those we make around it that make it happen. And also to evaluate and review the environment, the structure of our own direction and design, that we have created for ourselves by the big choices, the foundational choices we make about ourselves and our lives.

Do you make good or bad choices? Do you practice making them? Do you think about their potential impacts and outcomes? Do you look at the really big foundational choices that don’t often come up for review? As you review and revise the big, fundamental choices you make, the single point-in-time choices you make will change. And as those choices change, the choices that you make around those single choices will change. And as all of those choices change, your life will change. Change for the better.

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Cancel Culture & Smiting

I find it interesting that suddenly, as a society, we all have our drawers in a knot over cancel culture. The Left uses cancel culture as a means of testing progressive ideological purity and the Right uses it as a reason to whine and as a weapon to beat the Left with. Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote an article entitled, “Cancel Culture Is Not a Movement,” that was posted on the New Yorker site on March 11 of this year. He writes, “When politicians or commentators talk about ‘cancel culture,’ they are typically speaking of a fear that even ordinary people who express ideas that are politically incorrect will be publicly shamed—that social media has enabled a universal speech surveillance, and that people and institutions are now self-policing, out of fear of it.” Basically our version of Orwell’s Thought Police.

Wikipedia defines cancel culture as, “Cancel culture is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those who are subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled". In other words, banishment and exile.

Gay men are well aware of this phenomena. Gay men have been practicing cancel culture forever – and doing so in broad daylight so it isn’t new to us. Cancel culture, behaving as if someone or something does not exist and/or does not have the right to exist. If you are not pretty enough, don’t have a good enough body, have the wrong skin color, are too old, not wearing the proper trendy clothes, etc., you are toast.

Picture yourself out walking through the mall, let’s say, and a nice looking gay guy walks into your line of vision. They clock you looking at them. If you are not someone they find attractive, they will look away from you using a gesture I have come to call the “Neck Snap,” in which they turn their head, thus averting their eyes, away from you with such suddenness and ferocity, it is a wonder it doesn’t give them cervical damage. And they get to pretend you don’t even exist and, thus, get to avoid having to acknowledge you as a living, breathing presence on Earth. What would be nice would be if we learned to at least acknowledge one another.

As powerful as words are, words do not create reality. Yes, there are a lot of hurtful, condescending, demeaning pejorative phrases out there. And I have no issue with it being politically incorrect to use them, as well as morally wrong in many instances. That said, political correctness has been in use for a while now and those words or attitudes are still around. Banning words doesn’t fix the underlying problem. And if someone calls me a faggot or a pansy or says I am light in the loafers, well, sticks and stones may break my bones but you can kiss my ass. Doesn’t mean I want you banished from society. Just stay away from me. Your bad behavior is a reflection of you on you and has nothing to do with me. What I need to know is what has made you think and feel and act this way. What would be great would be if we started to ask people what led them to beliefs or opinions we find politically and/or morally incorrect and seek to understand.

It is the underlying issues of why the bad behaviors continue, in spite of political correctness, that need addressing. Yes, human history is chock-full of atrocious behavior that needs to be faced and dealt with but dealt with in the sense of what we are going to do moving forward. Rather than cancelling, I think on-going public reproach and shaming of people or groups is way more effective than banning or ostracism. Personally, I would like to see the return of public stocks and pillories. Now, I wouldn’t let the public physically harm those thus confined. I simply want them to be publicly shamed for their bad behavior. Dunce caps would be fine. Making someone stand on the courthouse steps holding a sign that says, “I haven’t mastered three syllable words yet,” works for me. You get the idea. As a friend of mine says, “If you don’t know how to act decently, we’ll show you how to act.” Problem is that those we judge as being in need of being confined to the public stocks and pillories no doubt feel the same way about us.

We live in a world where we all decry the lack of civility and decency and the shamelessness run riot though our society.  Banishing, ostracizing, excommunication, exile, cancelling, doesn’t make the problem go away. The only thing that goes away, at least for a while, is the particular offender or group of offenders. It was Joseph N. Welch, chief counsel for the United States Army, in his confrontation with McCarthy in hearings before McCarthy’s Senate subcommittee, in which he famously asked McCarthy "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" This was widely seen as a turning point against McCarthyism. (Wikipedia) The problem here is we all no longer seem to have a consensus on what constitutes decency.

Cancelling is a form of smiting. Very Old Testament. We end up judging those we deem or who have proven themselves as being beyond redemption, thus the need to banish. Does not the Judeo-Christian ethic teach us in the Bible about mercy and compassion over judgment? Mercy is taught in the Quran. Buddhism teaches compassion and mercy. You get my point. Now, yes, there are those in our history who seem by their acts and/or beliefs to be beyond redemption. And certainly, for some, redemption would be a long, hard road. But who among us, at some point in our life, has not needed compassion and at least the possibility of and chance at redemption? But, here again, those we judge and condemn as either needing redemption or being beyond redemption no doubt think we are as equally a lost cause.

Rather than cancelling, ostracizing, banishing, public shaming, exiling, etc., how about we learn to talk with one another again rather than at one another? We do still have the facility as thinking/feeling humans to create safe spaces in which we can begin to communicate rather than cancel. We can ask one another - How did you get here? What propelled you on your journey to these beliefs and actions? - We don’t have to agree with what we hear but at least we can begin to understand and in that understanding, odds are we will begin to once again find some common ground.

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Feelings, Wo-o-o Feelings

The song “Feelings” by Morris Albert begins with the lyric, “Feelings, nothing more than feelings, Trying to forget my feelings of love.” Truth is most people, especially men, would rather forget their feelings period, not just feelings of a lost love as in the song.

Feelings are messy. Feelings are problematic. Right? Where do they come from? What are you supposed to do with them? Why do you need them? Better just to not feel them, be done with them and enough already. Problem is that thoughts and feelings are a combination package. You can’t have one without the other. “Well,” they’ll say, “let me put my feelings aside here so I can be objective. Let me get my feelings out of the way so that I can be open-minded.” Or, conversely, “I need to get out of my head. I’ve been thinking about this too much and I just want to feel about it. I am just going to follow my feelings.” People try to pretend that they can do one without the other. But you can’t.

When we are determined to stay just with thinking, the thinking can lead to an endless loop of thinking-thinking-thinking that goes nowhere and you can’t make any kind of decision because you don’t get the confirmation or disapproval that feelings (your gut) provide for your thought process. Trying to deny feelings keeps you from some very important information that is available to you. Your feelings will let you know good idea, bad idea, try something else, get over it already, whatever. When we are determined to stay just with feelings, the feelings can become irrational because they are not tethered to anything, not grounded by anything. As a simple example, you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you are grumpy. So whatcha going to do? “Well, I’ll just feel grumpy until it goes away and let it potentially ruin my day. Or I’ll take it out on people who had nothing to do with me being grumpy.” Do you have any reason for feeling grumpy? If not, why not just let it go and enjoy your day?

So what are you supposed to do with thoughts and feelings? Recognize that the thought or feeling is there. Then acknowledge that it is you thinking or feeling this way and that nobody made you think or feel this. And then what? Well, is it important or is it just a passing thought or feeling? If it is just a thought or feeling passing through, let it go. “Well, I can’t do that.” Why not? Most people can do that with passing thoughts but feelings – “You have to understand. I had a feeeeeeling!” OK. And?

You all have noticed that there are lots of feelings right now out there in the world, with anger being one of the predominant emotions going around. Lots of people are angry about lots of things and many of these fine folks haven’t the slightest idea of what to do with all that anger except make sure that everybody else knows they are having this feeling.  We will deal specifically with anger in a future column and there is certainly nothing wrong with anger any more than there is nothing wrong about having any emotion. It is what you do with those feelings.

So what is your pattern of dealing with feelings? There is the ever-popular approach of trying to numb them so you don’t feel them at all. Some try to numb their feelings with the refreshment of their choice – weed, pills, booze, coke, mushrooms, some combination thereof. Others try to numb their feelings with other emotions like self-pity. “Oh, poor me. I am dealing with this or that and it is causing me to feel things I don’t want to deal with so I’ll just feel sorry for myself. Or, it is all so unfair. This and that has happened and I am the victim here.” It all goes numb when I feel like a victim and complain to anyone who will listen. Numbing, long-term, regardless of your method, does not work as those feelings don’t really go away unless acknowledged and consciously released.

Or do you just stuff it in one of your pockets and walk around with it a while? Men especially, usually when angry, love to withdraw and/or stomp around for days, weeks, months, acting angry but never doing anything about it. “I’ll just carry my feelings of love, anger, hope, fear, around in my shirt pocket.” But, again, those feelings don’t go anywhere until acknowledged and released appropriately.

Others blame, especially if it is a constricting emotion. “You made me feel this way.” No they didn’t. You feel what you feel. I can walk up to someone and tell them that they are ugly and their mother dresses them funny and get all kinds of reactions. One person might find it funny and laugh, another might be offended and insulted, and a third might wonder if I’d lost my mind. Or they might respond, “You know my mother?” But the reaction engendered reflects the makeup of the person, not what I did to them. Now that is not to say that when someone does something that evokes a response of love or fear or anger or whatever that that response isn’t important. If it is truly what you feel, then it is up to you to decide what to do with that feeling and how you are going to respond.

Some folks deny their feelings or distract themselves from their feelings or discount their feelings. “No, I’m not feeling whatever.” “Let’s go do something so I don’t have to deal with what I am feeling.” “Well, yeah, I am feeling a bit whatever but it isn’t that important.”

Finally, some people know what they are supposed to feel in certain situations but they would rather act those feelings out than actually feel those feelings. So it becomes a performance of feeling without actually feeling. And sometimes they can get away with it for a while but people catch on that there is little or no depth or substance to those performed feelings. You’ve all heard the complaint that someone is emotionally unavailable.

What is your pattern of handling feelings? It is a good time to do that self-assessment with so much free-floating anger and despair and uncertainty out there in the world. And when you do come across love or hope or joy or compassion, you will be able to access those feelings and reap their bounty.

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

But, But, I Trusted You

Photo 91623375 © Romolo Tavani | Dreamstime.com

How do you know if you can trust someone? Most of us think of it as a leap of faith. “Well, I’ll take a chance.” So we make the leap. Sometimes our trust is rewarded and sometimes it isn’t. And when it isn’t we feel betrayed, disappointed, hurt, angry. “But I trusted you.” And then you blame either them or you or both.

Trust is actually something way more practical. Do someone’s actions match their words? When someone says that they will attend an event with you but then “something” always comes up, do you continue to trust their words or past actions? When someone says that they can keep one of your secrets but they are forever telling you other peoples’ secrets, can you trust them to keep yours? If a friend swears that this time they will be on time for a concert, a movie, dinner, whatever, do you trust their past track record of behavior or what they are telling you now? That doesn’t mean you are not willing to be pleasantly surprised if they actually do show up on time but what are the odds?

If you go out with someone and they check their phone constantly, do you still trust them to be considerate and attentive? If every time you have a disagreement or fight with a friend or family member or significant other and they always go for the jugular and then tell you that it is your fault because they have told you not to make them mad, is this someone you should trust?

If someone tells you, “Listen, I gotta be honest here . . .,” the question isn’t should you trust what they are telling you now, but if they are being honest now, have they not been previously? If every time you go out with someone and they spend the night attention seeking or flirting or cruising the room, are you going to trust them to keep commitments such as fidelity – mental and emotional, not just physical – to you?

This also applies to self. Do you keep your word? Your promises? Or do you only do so when it is convenient? Do you keep confidences or is the allure of gossip too strong to resist? Do you keep your promises to yourself regarding your goals, you hopes, living by your principles like honesty and integrity (two components of self-esteem), your commitments to yourself? Are you the good friend, sibling, partner, you say you are or only when you have time?

You know yourself and your patterns and you know others and their patterns of behavior. It doesn’t take a lot of analysis or special powers of intuition. It only takes the power of observation regarding others and the power of honesty regarding yourself. Are you trustworthy with yourself? That will also impact your process and ability of trusting others. Do you say what you mean and do what you say? It is really that simple and that practical. Maybe not always easy or convenient but it is that simple.

If you trust someone who has demonstrated over time through their behavior that they are trustworthy, good.

If you don’t trust someone who has demonstrated over time through their behavior that they are not trustworthy, good.

If you don’t trust someone who has demonstrated over time through their behavior that they are trustworthy, not good.

If you trust someone who has demonstrated over time through their behavior that they are not trustworthy, not good.

All this to say that it doesn’t mean trust will never be broken by someone who you appropriately trusted. But the odds are much slimmer. And if and when that happens, that is on them for a poor choice or series of choices they made and not a reflection on you.

It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. It starts with you. Are you trustworthy? Can you trust you?

© 2021 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Freedom & Responsibility

It seems to me that in great part, what we see happening currently in our society is but symptom of a much larger crisis - a crisis of responsibility on both the Right and on the Left.

On the Right, there is the idea that they have the right to do what they want, without consequence, without accountability, without any responsibility - steal elections, gerrymander, run up deficits, lie to the American people about pretty much everything, make up "facts" out of nothing substantive, you get my drift. It heads in the direction of tyranny in that you hear now in the press that a minority of the country is imposing its will, due to gerrymandered districts, due to voter suppression, due to the stoking of fear and resentment, due to feeling it is OK to buy elections and politicians, due to its leaders feeling entitled to steal, is imposing its will (or trying) on the majority of the citizens of this country.

Our leaders on the Right avoid responsibility like the plague. Nobody - no Senator, no Representative, no Cabinet member, and through many state and local governments, through corporate business leadership, through the undermining of the rule of law, through the levels of corruption that no one even bothers to hide any more, ain't nobody responsible for nothing. They feel entitled to do what want, to take what they want, to bend the rules and the laws to what they want. And it becomes a form of tyranny over the rest of us that we are all at sufferance of.

The free press and, luckily, some federal and state law enforcement agencies are trying to hold people accountable and responsible but, as we are seeing, it is a long hard fight. Freedom indulged in without the balance and tempering of responsibility becomes tyranny and it becomes a sense of entitlement.

On the Left the freedom with no sense of responsibility manifests differently but it is no less tyrannical and no less entitled, though we tend to stay well within the confines of the law. We are at sufferance of the Identity Politics purists and the tyranny they impose. Here I am entitled because I am a member of whatever disadvantaged group with whom I identify. And as a member of that group, I need not hear or countenance that that offends me. And I am egregiously aggrieved and offended by pretty much everything everyone who is not politically correct to the purest and highest form says. I get to demand safe spaces and the vetting and potential censorship of any speech I decide I might not like.

Here is an example and it is a true story. In a discussion in a recent class that a friend attended, a discussion of people running for office came up for whatever reason. One of the attendees made it known that they found the term "running" for office offensive as it was potentially offensive and unjust to disabled people who are not able to run. Now, let's be clear, I am in now way suggesting that social wrongs should not be righted and people made whole. Don't even. Right? But in regard to this kind of example - seriously?

I have the freedom to demand political correctness; I have the right not to hear anything I don't like or want to hear; I have the right to impose the threat of my being offended on everyone so they must walk on eggshells around me for fear of my wrath. And because of my membership in whatever identity group, I am also entitled to feel this way and insist that everybody else feel this way as well. That is a form of tyranny and entitlement.  

Further, with the exception of the recent elections and maybe what had become the rule is now broken – please God, please God, please God – is that the Left sabotages itself with these demands of purity. If someone wasn’t progressively pure enough, if we didn’t agree with everything thing they did or said, if their views or voting record did not conform to a strict party line – not unlike that same demand made by the Right  on its peeps – then they were no good. Either you were perfect or you were the goat and there was no in between. This led to a rigging of the primary process in the 2016 primaries – something we are not going to litigate here. But the people responsible felt free and entitled to impose their will on the rest of the party and look at where that got us.

Now. Both sides are guilty and we are in the process of leaving a financial and environmental mess for the Millennials to fix and leaving Millennials in a financial mess due to student load debt, exorbitant health and housing costs, stagnant wages because God forbid we raise wages and decrease shareholder value. It is a damned disgrace.

We aren’t being responsible for the environment, health care reform, fully funding education that will prepare people for the new and emerging economy, infrastructure, etc. Instead, we continue to fight the culture wars, trying to impose our will, our values, our understanding, our sense of what matters, our sense of morality, etc., on the other side who we view as ignant troglodyte morons upon whom we are entitled to impose our world view.

Point is that in our world, in our country, in our society we see a lot of tyranny – corporate, political, personal – and a lot of entitlement and lots of hand-wringing over it but very little in the way of responsibility – responsibly responding to the things that really matter most. Where is the seeking middle ground so we can come to some practical solutions? Freedom without responsibility becomes tyranny and freedom without responsibility becomes entitlement and that freedom to dictate to others and to be entitled has now becoming our prison. Time to respond and free ourselves before it becomes too late.

© 2018   Living Skills, Inc.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling and life coaching services in Atlanta for the LGBT community. Also available by Skype. If you have questions, comments or want to find out about our services, please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com

The Lie of Trolling

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Dictionary.com defines trolling as “to post inflammatory or inappropriate messages or comments on (the Internet, especially a message board) for the purpose of upsetting other users and provoking a response.” I will add not just a response but a negative emotional response from which the trolled will then respond.

I see and expect some trolling on Facebook and other sites and there is plenty of it. I also see it in people’s comments and responses to news articles on sites like The Washington Post and The New York Times. I am embarrassed for these sites as they are giving us respectable journalism and the people reading and commenting online are behaving like screaming petulant children.

There is name calling. Adults who do not know one another calling each other names. Is this what they are teaching their kids? It does not help that Mr. Trump has elevated retaliation by name calling to a very visible level. Nonetheless, name calling predates him. The name calling ranges from slurs like moron, idiot, stupid, etc., to equating people one doesn’t agree with, with Nazis, fascists, socialists, communists, etc., and anything and everything in between. Really? There is no – absolutely no – interest in understanding what the other person is saying and why they are saying it. Only the assertion that I am right and you’re not. Period. And because I am right and you’re not, you are a moron, jackass, etc.

There are lots of opinions but opinions usually accompanied by very little fact. Patrick Stokes wrote an article that appeared on theconversation.com entitled, “No, you’re not entitled to your opinion.” He states quite correctly, “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.” And to do that, you need facts. I think the people who want to have their opinion count as much as fact simply want to get away with anything they want to say and say it for any reason at all. But can they substantiate their argument? Absolutely not. Thus the need for name calling so as to distract from the fact that they can’t defend whatever opinion position they are declaring.

He also makes the points that there are such things as facts like 2+2 =4; there are no square circles, etc. Right? Stokes writes, “I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate.”

Nevertheless, the next step in the trolling process – having already moved through name calling and insistence on one’s opinion - is the determination that “I am right. Not only am I right but you’d better get it.” The need to be right, is as fascinating as it is destructive. Now, many of us grew up in an atmosphere in which you got punished for making mistakes or being wrong. It isn’t bad enough that you feel terrible for having been wrong or having made a mistake but that you have to be punished for it on top of it, is insane thinking. We should encourage learning from experiences where we fall short. Heaven forbid. I need to be right and I am going to be right, no matter the cost.  And we have all seen people throw away jobs, friendships, relationships, all in service to having to be right.

Next we then get into more name calling, threats back and forth and even death threats. The most egregious example I can think of currently was the fact that the Parkland, Florida school kids driving the #Enough and March for Our Lives movements received death threats as well as smears seeking to delegitimize them. First if all, no one with any decency – ANY DECENCY – makes deaths threats against children, much less children who have lived through something as horrific as a school shooting. So we threaten one another. We seek to delegitimize people we don’t agree with so that we don’t feel bad about the name calling, the insulting, the opinion slinging, and the insistence on being right. But do we try listening or seeking to understand the other person? Why would you want to do that when demonizing someone is so much more fun? I mean they don’t know what they are talking about, they are wrong, they deserve what they get. Right?

And we call this trolling. And we accept trolling as an inevitable part of being on the internet. And we accept this behavior from adults in our society. And we heave and sigh and wring our hands and wonder whatever is to be done about such uncivil behavior.

I think it time to call trolling out for what it is - cowardly childish irresponsible manipulation. It is cowardly because the trolls can hide behind a pretty good layer of anonymity. Few people actually know them or know who they are and where they live, etc., but then the trolls aren’t flaming their friends. So they get online, pick fights from behind the screen of the internet and never actually risk any consequences for their bad behavior. For my part, you got something ugly to say to me? It better be in person to my face and you’d better be civil about it. Otherwise, you are just a coward with a big mouth.

It is childish because it is all a giant attempt at manipulating others. You don’t have to be smart to manipulate people. As a matter of fact, those who use manipulation rather than engaging in a productive conversation as their “go to” strategy aren’t real smart. Why? Because young children manipulate. They don’t even have to be taught how to do it. They figure it out on their own and work at manipulating their parents into giving them what they want until their parents teach them that such behavior isn’t acceptable. It isn’t a sign of advanced intelligence. How do I know that? Look at the quality of most manipulations. The manipulator is grasping at straws and will try anything. Further, for the most part, we know when we are being manipulated. We can feel it. When someone gets online with the sole intent of provoking a negative emotional response from strangers, one wonders if there is any good reason for them behaving like this other than they can and they risk few if any consequences, like children seeing what they can get away with

And trolling is irresponsible. Manipulation is not an acceptable response, ever. Trolling is hurtful, disrespectful, uncivil, unkind, you get my point. If your kids behaved this way you’d have a fit. But hey, it’s the internet and so . . . whatcha gonna do? My foot. Were it up to me on my site, posts would either have to be vetted like they do with letters to the editor to make sure the letters presented offer something substantive in an appropriate fashion, or they would not be allowed. I don’t want to be party to venues where I have to listen to adults behave like spoiled brats. It embarrasses me as I wonder if this is really the best we can do in 2018.  I sincerely hope not. But my point is not to play scolding parent to the world. The point and the shame of it all is when you look at the problems the world is facing – big problems needing big solutions – and then you realize the amount of time and energy and focus and intention that goes into trolling is leaving a lot less energy and time and focus for solving the big problems. So, do we want to fiddle, or troll in this case, while Rome burns or do we want to leave the world a better place?

One final thought. Every time one of us responds to a troll, that increases the page view numbers of whatever site the nonsense pushing our buttons is on. More views equal potential ad clicks. And they show the increased numbers of page views to advertisers and potential investors. The more page views, the higher price you can charge for ads. So sites, even the “respectable” ones, have a financial incentive to allow, if not outright promote, trolling as it means money in the bank. Cynical, right? Am I? Do you want to feed into this kind of corporate greed at the expense of the and risk of losing civil society? Trolling has no value. Civil conversation might – but that ain’t happening on the internet as it goes against corporate interests. So once again, do we want to fiddle, or troll in this case, while Rome burns or do we want to leave the world a better place?

© 2018   Living Skills, Inc.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling and life coaching services in Atlanta for the LGBT community. Also available by Skype. If you have questions, comments or want to find out about our services, please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com

Victimology – Blame - Entitlement & Compassion

I recently got myself involved in a brief mild controversy on Facebook. Someone of long acquaintance whom I admire posted a copy of an open letter that someone had written and posted excoriating the CEO of a major cruise line. The letter writer’s objection was about the cruise line’s medical staff not being experienced enough or properly prepared to care for passengers who accidentally overdose on drugs while at sea. Further, the ship should bring along additional medical personnel who are qualified to deal with drug overdoses.

He was also mad because the cruise line refused to distribute free condoms, that they would supply the ship with, when the cabins are cleaned. He then goes on to say, in the open letter, that though he is aware that the cruise line prohibits drug use, people are going to do it any way and that “the likelihood of drug use increases exponentially when the ship’s itinerary includes all-night dance parties.” So, basically, the cruise line needs to get over it and get ready to deal with at least the possibility of drug overdoses because at sea there are no nearby hospitals like there would be to a bar on land. And by not having his medical staff prepared, the CEO was profiting off of people in whose welfare he has no interest in. “And finally, condoms should be available at all hours of the day, just as they would be on land.” After all, boys just want to have fun.

OK?

Now, what got me into trouble is this. Let’s start with some practical matters. No CEO is going to tacitly publicly approve of the use of drugs on his cruise ships. Not going to happen for a whole host of reasons. Right? Much less say, “Sure, bring all of the drugs you want and we’ll be ready for whatever you party boys throw at us.” Seems to me like being mad with the police for not providing drunk drivers a safe space until they sober up instead of arresting them for drunk driving. Secondly, now that it has been very publicly stated that, “Hey Y’all. We’re bringing drugs,” what is to prevent the DEA from raiding the boat in an American port or the authorities in a foreign port from doing the same? And I asked why is there no responsibility on the people choosing to take the drugs? No one forced them.

Regarding 24 hour condom availability, why should condom distribution be the responsibility of the cruise line? They are not running a bath house. If people want to do drugs, fine, but the responsibility is on them and if they think they will need condoms, then pack them in advance. You want the freedoms that adults have? Then take the responsibilities that come with those freedoms.

Now a lot of people agreed with me and liked the comment. However, I was also accused of saying that if someone overdoses, we should let them die. That I was saying that “naïve party boys” who overdosed did not deserve care. And that I was terrible for making these kinds of moral judgments and that I was uncompassionate because I would let them die.

I said nothing of the sort.

Then someone else chimed in that I should not let young gay men die – “even if they're doing bad choices and not taking responsibility, not sure you let them die because of that.” Further, even cops now carry Narcan to prevent opiate overdoses so if they can do that, why would I let young gay men on a cruise die? “Also where do you draw the line there, do you not carry a defib machine because someone has a heart attack from being overweight - isn't that their responsibility? If someone pigs out on the dessert buffet and goes into diabetic shock do you not carry those supplies since people should just know better.”

Now, if you have read all of the previous 667 words, I have said nothing about letting people die. I would never withhold care from anyone who needed it. I am a practicing counselor, for Pete sake. The notion that I would condone or approve of the withholding of care because I think the person needing care is responsible for the problem they find themselves in - they made their bed and should have to lie in - is absurd.

What I have an issue with is the victimology behind the open letter. I would expect the medical staff to be adequately prepared. “If someone overdoses at sea, they are the victim here and it is the cruise line’s responsibility to be prepared.” Yes, the medical staff should be prepared or the people organizing the cruise can arrange to bring additional properly trained medical staff. However, the people who overdose are not victims. They made a bad choice and, hopefully, after receiving medical care they will learn to make better choices in the future. We are responsible for the choices we make and the actions we take in life. That is how you grab up power when you suddenly feel powerless.

The cruise line is not to blame. Blame and victim go together. I am the victim because of what “they” did to me. It is disempowering to stay there and if we stay in victim we can’t do anything about it, much less begin the healing process. And blame has really never ever solved anything.

Now, certainly, there are times in life where we may be the victim. Legitimately. We have all been at sufferance of the transgressions of others or at sufferance of situations beyond our control. OK. But staying there and blaming them that did it will get you where? Waiting and hoping and praying for someone or something to come and rescue you. Doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a helping hand when one is needed but in waiting to be rescued, you may have a very long wait. However, what we are talking about here is when you are the victim of your own poor decisions and choices and your response to that is to play the victim and blame someone or something else.

So, once we have victim and blame firmly in place, then comes the third component of the trifecta – entitlement. “Because this happened and I have been wronged, I am entitled to . . .” This leads to heart ache because when we feel entitled to a better life, it always comes back to us being responsible for delivering that to ourselves. Life has given you opportunity and hope and imagination and free will and so much more already, it owes you nothing more.

So if something untoward happens to you as a result of a choice you made or an action you took, don’t play victim and blame. Discover what there is to be learned here. How are you going to go about healing from this? What is your strategy for making a better choice next time? That’s power. That’s also compassion toward yourself by consciously seeking to forgive and heal.

And, above all, if you need immediate medical attention, get it.

© 2018   Living Skills, Inc.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling and life coaching services in Atlanta for the LGBT community. Also available by Skype. If you have questions, comments or want to find out about our services, please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com

The Times They Are a Changin’ - Are You Surprised?

The world is changing. That becomes more and more apparent with every passing day. Whether you embrace and welcome the changes that are afoot or are horrified by what you see in the news, there is no getting around the fact that nothing has been the same recently.

Have you stopped to take a minute to really assess and sit with how all of this is affecting you? The times maybe a changin’ but, if you aren’t yet aware of it, so are you. For many people, they are finding that the things, people, places, ways of doing and being that they have held onto tenaciously for years no longer work for them as they once did. It maybe something as seemingly silly as you have eaten Cheerios every morning of your life for the last however many years and you woke up one morning and one more bowl of Cheerios just wasn’t going to cut it. And you were surprised.

It may be something more substantial like you no longer find your job or your work fulfilling as they once were. You may find yourself moving away from friends or relatives with whom you have been close because the relationship no longer nurtures or comforts you. And you are surprised.

Technology has changed so much of the way in which we relate to one another. And you are suddenly surprised at the effects it is having on the way you feel about or relate to others. And you are surprised.

Finding a job used to be an easy thing but the world has changed and making sense of the “new rules” of job hunting may seem alien or unfair or incomprehensible. Healthcare has changed. The way we get our news has changed. The way politics works has changed. The feeling of being in charge or in control of our lives has changed. And we are surprised.

The problem is that most people don’t like surprises - even the positive surprises, much less the surprises that are unwelcome.

Many of us have constructed our lives based on our past and what has worked for us successfully in the past. Others of us have constructed our lives as a defense against that past, trying to ensure that our future is nothing like our past. We cling to the rituals of our life that we have composed, hoping to stay safe and happy and successful. If we just focus on our job or make sure we have date night once a week with the spousal unit or talk to friends every other day or take our vitamins or make sure we do our oil change on the car every 3000 miles without fail, things will be fine. But as 2017 draws to a close, many of us are beginning to realize that the things that used to work for us aren’t working anymore. And we are surprised.

What in your life is starting to feel confining to you? What no longer gives you the feeling of freedom or the feeling of safety or the feeling of hope that it used to? What no longer makes you happy that always used to do the trick? Where is your routine breaking down or no longer serving you? How are you coping with the “new normal” when you aren’t even sure what the new normal is? What are you doing with the feelings of unease that have started creeping in from under the floorboards? How are you answering the questions – Am I still OK? Is life still OK? Are the important relationships in my life still OK? Are my routines and rituals still OK? And what are you doing if the answer is, “No,”? As the world around you gives you less solid things to hold onto, as old ways of doing things no longer work, what can you hold onto? How are you dealing with the surprising fact that you find yourself surprised, in not downright astonished? WTF? Right?

The first step is to recognize that maybe somethings really don’t work for you anymore. “But I always . . .” Honestly recognize that maybe some of the beliefs you have held about this or that in your life no longer serve you. Maybe they never did. Maybe they are beliefs that were given to you by parents or friends or family, school, job, society, the media, whomever. What beliefs do you find being called into question by you? Sometimes just that recognition can be enough to free you from old and outmoded beliefs and let you look at life with fresh eyes. Beliefs affect attitudes. How have you found that suddenly some of your attitudes toward people, places, things, have shifted or changed or even done a 180 degree turn? An example of this might be that with all of the uncertainty in the world, with all of the confusion and doubt you find that your normally sunny disposition has become ever so slightly, or maybe not so slightly, cynical? How are you feeling about that? Surprised? Confused? Uncertain?

What we think and how we feel are directly impacted by our beliefs and the attitudes we carry and rely on. Maybe, given the craziness out there in the world, thinking and feeling is more than I can deal with right now. I’ve got too much to do to stop and worry about what I am thinking and feeling. I just need to get everything done and then maybe I will look at my feelings about whatever or what I think about this or that. The problem here would be that the thoughts and feelings are there anyway. That is a process hard-wired into us humans and so what we think and what we feel is always there, whether we pay conscious attention to it or not. Do you find you are having new or different ways of thinking about things? When you look at your life, when you look at the world, have your feelings about things changed from their usually reliable position?

What about decisions and choices? Decisions precede the action of choice. I’ve made the decision to go on a diet. “Yep. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna loose that ten pounds.” OK, but have you made the choice to stop buying ice cream every week at the store? Have you made the choice to try eating fruit when you want something sweet? A silly example but you get the point. How have your decisions and choices changed? I have several friends who several years ago would never ever ever have considered owning a gun. But in the world they currently find themselves in, not feeling safe in their homes, they’ve decided that they need a gun and made the choice to buy one, as example. I know people who have made the decision to start keeping people at arm’s length or have started avoiding people when they can. They just don’t want to be bothered anymore. What decisions and choices have you made recently that surprised you? That were “out of character” for you?

Recognition of what doesn’t work anymore. Recognition of how you find yourself changing in relationship to yourself, your life and the people and places and things in it – and these changes are not necessarily negative. You may have made some really good changes but you still feel more unmoored than you’d like to be.

Recognition of how you find yourself changing in a world that seems to be losing it mind. And with the recognition then comes the acknowledgment that, ‘Yeah, that’s where I am right now. For good or for ill, that’s where I am right now. Doesn’t mean I have to stay here but I need to acknowledge that this is where I am right now with this belief or this attitude or my thoughts and feelings or my decision and choices.” Maybe I just don’t feel I have the same amount to give to other people anymore. Maybe I don’t want to spend the time investing in this person or that hobby or that job anymore. Maybe I don’t want anymore Cheerios for breakfast. I need to acknowledge that this is where I am at the moment That acknowledgment doesn’t mean that I will stay frozen or stuck here. I can choose to move beyond where I am whenever I am ready.

Then I need to forgive the fact that I may or may not like the changes that I find are happening within me or within my life or within my world. I need to forgive the fact that through no apparent fault of my own I find myself where I am. Forgive the fact that somethings no longer serve you like they used to – be it in whatever area or arena of life you are finding these changes. And then, finally, decide what the next step is. If the changes are going to keep coming, what kind of changes would I like to see based on where I am now? How do I move forward? How do I incorporate the changes in myself and in my life? I don’t need to decide my entire future right now, just what is the next step – however big or small that step might be?

Give all of that time. Things are changing. I am changing. The world is changing. How do I begin to cope, to deal with all of that? All of the above is a good first step.

But beyond that, how do I deal with how surprised I am by all of this? "Well, I’m just too damned depressed by the whole thing to deal with it." Maybe you are. There are ways to deal with depression so that you don’t get buried under its weight. If you are dealing with depression, get help. None of us is supposed to be so self-reliant that we never need to ask for some help or guidance.

Maybe you find yourself just so shocked by it all that you have no idea where to turn. No, not the faux shock that we read about every day in the news or in social media. That kind of, “I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked that this or that is happening,” usually followed by hand-wringing and false piety about the way things “should” be. No. But we all have had a great deal to deal with – politics and the governance of our country has gone off the rails. There have been horrendously destructive fires and hurricanes and droughts. There have been mass shootings in places where people thought they would be safe like churches and schools. There has been a lot to be truly shocked at. OK. Where in your small corner of the world can you regroup and begin to handle your shock at the world or your shock at some of the changes you find happening? You can’t do it all at once. Do it the same way you’d eat an elephant – one bite at a time.

Suppose you find yourself slipping into being judgmental about everyone and everything? When judgment comes up, ask yourself is this really the way you want to be? What will being judgmental accomplish besides freezing you in place, unable to process or deal with anything because you have erected your judgment in front of you like a shield? What will judgment do except encourage you to want to punish those whom you have decided deserve to be harshly judged?

If you find yourself feeling alienated from the people in your life, from those who you love and care about or you find the surprises of what is going on in life making you fearful and wanting to shut down or you feel that you are alone against a world that no longer bears resemblance to the world you thought you knew, return to step one: Recognize that that is where you are and acknowledge that the thoughts and feelings and decisions and choices and beliefs and attitudes I am encountering are mine. I am angry. I am shocked. I am fearful. I feel alienated and alone. I am feeling judgmental. I can’t cope with any more surprises. Then forgive the fact that that is where I am right now and acknowledge that in that recognition, I can do something about it. And then go out beginning to deal with the fallout from the surprises life has been bringing you.

These are tough times but they can be successfully navigated. Ask for help when you need it from friends, family, business associates, professionals, whomever. Go within and take care of yourself. Nurture yourself. Look for answers within yourself. Life will always bring surprises and sometimes they will be welcome and sometimes they won’t. And it won’t always be easy. But there are places to start and remember, you are not alone.

© 2017 Living Skills, Inc.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling and life coaching services in Atlanta for the LGBT community. Also available by Skype. If you have questions, comments or want to find out about our services, please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com

Our Age of Spiritual Crisis

One of the myths from my childhood that I held most dear has been shattered. The myth was that with each successive generation, we as a humanity, grew and became wiser but also more sophisticated in our thinking. NPR and PBS were born, surely as a sign of our intellectual maturity and need for a more advance stimulation than what the three major networks provided. Lincoln Center and then the Kennedy Center were built and opened. No great country, no great civilization has ever survived and thrived without great arts and here we seemed to be making a commitment to the arts. A further sign of our advancement. The EPA came into being and respecting the Earth and cleaning it up by cleaning up our own act seemed the only responsible thing to do. The Great Society programs that sought to lift up those among us who needed help. Surely all of this was witness to our continuing enlightenment and progress as a humanity, was it not? Why would we ever turn back to be less than we could be? We went to the moon and heart transplants worked and who knew what the next great advancement would be?

So said my myth. We live in a time in which many celebrate fear and ignorance and cruelty and intolerance. A time where spin and propaganda/alternative facts are countenanced in public discourse and facts and science and advancement and research are replaced with the crusade for never-ending and ever-increasing corporate profits and the rule of law is fighting for its life against authoritarianism. All of this certainly does not speak to striving to become what we as a humanity are capable of as individuals and as a society. Seems to me, we are living in an age of profound, worldwide spiritual crisis.

As spiritual beings we must acknowledge that for each of us and all of us, the future could be a nightmare, a mediocrity, or a dream. For some of us, our individual lives may get no better or no worse than mediocre – safe, not real exciting, not much variety but hey, things could be a lot worse. Don’t rock the boat. And while for some of us our lives may now be and continue to be made up of bits and pieces of our dreams for our lives, more and more and bigger and bigger pieces of those dreams coming to us – all of us, no matter where we all are on the continuum from how great our lives are to how OK our lives are, will have to witness and be a party to, in some way, the nightmare. And we are indeed witnessing a nightmare where the dismantling of our government is being attempted and corruption, unrest, lack of opportunity, economic disparity, instability and never-ending war is run riot worldwide.

These are not happy times, though that doesn’t mean I can’t personally be happy. But still that isn’t always easy nowadays. We must have hope, we are told. We’ve gotten through worse, we’ll get through this. I am not so sure. Given the magnitude and breadth of problems worldwide, I think it fair to say we are all well into uncharted territory. The eminent mythologist and comparative religion scholar Joseph Campbell, in his Mythos series of lectures, discusses the common use of the directions – East, South, West and North – in the mythologies of many religious and spiritual traditions worldwide. This order that the directions are listed in reflects the course of the sun.

The sun rises in the East and a new day is born. I would think that the story in the Christian tradition of the star in the East is a reflection of that myth; the star, the fire in the night heavens portending a new day. The sun reaches its zenith in the southern sky at noon, representing as Campbell says, “the culmination moment of conscious in the field of time.” In the West the sun sets, sinking into the transcendence waiting to be rise again tomorrow. The North, Campbell tells us, is where the demons and disease and danger and tyranny come from.

Myths are not fairy tales. Myths are stories, rituals if you will, of how to navigate one’s way through this unfathomable mystery of life. If I have had to give up the myth from my childhood that gave me much comfort, then maybe I could garner some hope from this new myth. We are currently and collectively all facing North. It is dark and it is cold and the potential for the spread of tyranny is much with us. Perhaps we are collectively like the Moon who must shed her shadow in order to be born again. We are witnessing our collective Shadow, our Dark Shadow as I believe Jung would call it. All of our darkness; all of our negativity; all of our judgments and prejudices; our jealousies, envies and rages; all our selfishness and greed; all of it staring us all in the face as a humanity and it isn’t going away. Perhaps we as a humanity are about to confront and heal our Dark Shadow. Perhaps we, as a collective, are about to shed our skin like the serpent in order to be born again. Perhaps we are at the threshold of a new age that we have all been promised – the Aquarian Age and the return of the Divine Feminine into our lives.

I could live with that new myth. But for all of that to come true, for the Dark Shadow that now spreads to be confronted and healed – not fought and defeated – it will take our will, our free will and it will need to happen now. There is no do it later. There is no let them do it. There is no it can wait for a future generation. It will take our free will individually and collectively. I can hope for that. I can take comfort from that. And each day as the Sun rises in the East, that effort must begin anew.

© 2017 Living Skills, Inc.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling and life coaching services in Atlanta for the LGBT community. If you have questions, comments or want to find out about our services, please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com