Postcards from the Funny Farm

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You may know the title is a John Lennon tune. I think getting through the night is sometimes easier said than done when you are down.  For babies, sometimes all you need to do is change the crib bedding, for grownups, it’s not always so easy.  There is a reason companies offer a plethora of choices for crib bedding that range as far across the comfort spectrum as blue jeans for grownups.  They want the babies to sleep, so they hook them up with comfortable stuff.

Everybody gets the blues sometimes. For some of us, it hits harder than others. I have an online friend who writes fluid prose with imagery about her travels through depression. When I read them it reminds me of those scenes in “What Dreams May Come” when the woman is in the broken up house and she can’t get out. Another online friend I know is going through some really tough times and has posted on her blog that it is so difficult to be inspired, she’s having trouble blogging. There is a lot of depression in the world, don’t be in denial if you get it too.

In this post, I offer you something that works for me. When I get scared, sad, or depressed my family and work potentially suffers. I want to crawl into a ball, put my favorite CD on and just shut everyone out until things get better. Unfortunately as an adult husband, professional, and father of 3, this isn’t always an option. Because of who I am and aim to be, I have to get through. Maybe you experience feelings such as these and would like a suggestion for help. When I have these feelings, one thing I try is to imagine I only have a limited amount of time to live.

For example, in the past I once received a note from a boss telling me she/he needed to meet with me immediately. This was on a Friday and I had no idea why the meeting was called. That was a 48 hour wait so as part of my therapy and keeping my spirits up, I imagined Monday was my last day on Earth. The result was, I hugged my kids all weekend and didn’t worry at all about the silly meeting. When the meeting did happen, it was about a silly rumor and my boss just wanted to let me know the real story … can you imagine the waste if I would have worried about it all weekend?

This may or may not work for you, but I have found it helpful. Do you have any tricks to get you through the night?

A therapist told me, “The thirties are a time when you grow into your own skin.” and that was healing to me at the time. I had just turned 30 and was seeing her for depression and cognitive issues I was having. (people are saying … eeek, Damien is finally revealing things, well don’t get too excited, that wasn’t the half of it ;) Maybe hearing that explains the title of my blog a bit more.

At any rate, I love therapy and I have been in many therapists’ offices through the years. Words I have received from therapists have been some of the best advices I’ve ever received, even more than parents and loved ones. I know a lot of you reading this now even could benefit from a therapy session or two. If you want to discuss it further, leave your question/interest in the comments and maybe I can point you in the right direction. But back to my point: this woman told me that about the thirties and I remember thinking it was so hopeful. I felt like such a failure through my twenties about a few key things so it was like a chance to do things right: a birth so-to-speak.

Well folks, I will tell you that all I did was turn my now balding head and 39 candles were on my birthday cake. It goes fast so make it count. Being unsure of your career doesn’t go on a medical id bracelets. If you are not sure of where you are going, consider therapy … IGNORE THE STIGMA. What do you think about growing into your own skin? Are the thirties the time?

Today’s fast paced world leaves us all exhausted at the end of most days. Right now, as an example, I have that woozy feeling I have forgotten an appointment because I didn’t transfer it from my wallet to my Yahoo! calendar. Oh well, if I did I did. I’m pretty good about that usually. Anyway, with life being so fast, as Randy Pausch reminded us all, I think it’s really important to have some therapeutic reverie once in a while. I talk about W.I.N. with my team at work and sometimes, reverie needs to be “what is important now.” One day it may be getting your kid immunized, another it might be to buy pet supplies.

Looking back at life’s seasons and grand events helps us move forward more bravely. When we can see our bio as separate from our now it makes us seem greater than we are, or at least more able. I recommend listing your accomplishments by decades but if you are in your twenties or younger, that’s not much of a filing system. Separate your life into sections you find relevant, but try and do it when you can steal away for some quiet time. You can draw mantras from these for the upcoming year (ie; “I carried my running team by gaining 4 points in the finals”)

Here’s a portion of mine as an example:

Decade 0-10

• I was put into the gifted and talented education program in 2nd grade.
• I wrote “Swimmy the Turtle” and won 2nd place in the state fair in 3rd grade.
• more

Decade 11-20

• I learned every guitar riff The Alarm recorded.
• I got my first job as a printer’s apprentice.
• I trained as a camp counselor and counseled on summer.

Decade 21-30

• I met and recorded with my rock hero Dave Sharp of the Alarm.
• I got a job teaching at 27 in an inner-city school.
• I got my Master’s Degree at age 28.

Decade 31-39

• I got married at 33.
• by 38 I had my third kid and decided that was plenty ;)
• I bought my first mortgaged home at 39 and it has a pool!

If you try it, have fun with it. I suppose if you’re a blogger you might want to consider it like a meme. Please do! Everyone else, just thank goodness you aren’t self-absorbed as we bloggers and do it on a notepad and save to your desktop. It’s therapeutic and an absolute recommendation from me. Can you say “absolute recommendation?” Hmmm. Ok well, regardless, I recommend doing it. Life is good, but it will pass you by if you don’t stop once in a while.

Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) is arguably the first cognitive therapy. I’ve been a fan of cognitive therapy ever since I was introduced to it by a licensed clinical social worker in 1999. Got issues? It works. No, it’s not holding hands over the eyes of your partner like the picture shows, I just chose that one because I thought it conveyed closeness and safety.

Reckless emotions and “telling on” people and crying, all that has its place on a therpist’s couch (arguably), But REBT works you through the stuff that is holding you back more quickly.

I wanted to start dialog on this today since I feel it can truly transform your life at work, home, et al. I’m sure to bring it up again since I am that impressed with it for anyone and everyone. By the way, Presently, my wife and I are using it to put an end to some of our recurrent fight issues, and it is working. We are finding that some of our biggest “triggers” come from things that happened to us when we were kids and it is very relieving to be able to understand how to do things better. To feel better about the things that happen to you (even the bad stuff) REBT is worth looking into.

I must give credit to the creator of REBT, Albert Ellis. Mr. Ellis put together a system of cognitive therapy that has literally revolutionized my life, along with millions of others. Let me tell you what it is exactly:

REBT consists of a very simple acronym: ABC

A: This is the adversity that happens to you: boss calls you into your office and it doesn’t seem good, wife yells downstairs to you and it sounds really bad, you hear someone peel out their tires in front of your house and you hear a glass shatter … etc. These things are neutral in and of themselves, you don’t know what they mean right away.

B: This stands for what you believe based on a myriad of past learned experiences and attitudes. Mostly, it means what you have experienced relating to the “A.” If you have been a baseball player for years, a high speed object coming past you may not be as frightening as someone who has had ammo flying past them. Basically, this is how you see the “A.” REBT looks at this closely to determine if the A is really the sole cause of your emotions about it and not “B.” REBT works to remove the B. For example, let’s say your boss calls you into his office. You feel like you should get up and walk in, but something keeps you from going in. It might be because your parent once called you into their office for something negative. You may come to find the incident was only a positive thing.

C: This stands for consequence. As a result of behavior, there are inevitably consequences. Usually when people get to therapy, their C has not been positive.

The place to point in REBT is B: belief. What you believe about what happened must be separated from the true meaning of A.

Hmmm, when people told me I was doing a bad job, they always fired me after that. This could be an imagined belief. Therefore, my boss yelled at me so therefore I will be fired soon.

This is not necessarily the case and a responsible person who wants to live a life outside the funny farm will work to examine the b in light of a. The end result?  Ellis actually calls the next step “D” which stands for DISPUTE of the previously held, if indeed held, self-defeating Belief.

The next time you get in a fight with your spouse or have any form of self-defeating thought,  remember the ABC’s of REBT:  A) Adversity, B) Belief, C) Consequence, and D) DISPUTE steps of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. Not only could it save your life, it could make it better than you dreamed possible.

*Works Consulted: Wikipedia, my own life, my own cognitive therapy sessions.

Summers can be for resting, especially if you are a teacher. They can also be times to test yourself and learn lessons that benefit you all Winter long. Going along with the teacher thought, I want to raise the idea of “training.” In all businesses there is an element of training. This training is usually meant to stretch the worker to a place where she/he will be more productive.

Along the way to increased productivity unfortunately we meet Mr. discomfort and sometimes … Mr. pain. Do you know him?

Training is about opening your mind. Many of us have minds that are so closed they must be pried open. That has been my mind this summer. I’ve been teaching 8th graders that cuss and insult adults and consider themselves adults on top of it all. I realize now, with only 2 days remaining in the session, that this has been training. Like ankle weights for when I return to my 4th grade class. I don’t like to dwell too much on my own occupation in these posts. It is meant to be a parallel to your job, your “training.”

As you probably know from reading my blog, I am always analyzing and seeking new cognitive strategies to battle life’s troubles. Sometimes I even see it as a sport. I am a student of psychology and a fan of all human things that inspire.

But sometimes you have to just live it.

I have 900+ posts and counting here. Each post has some sort of cognitive mechanism conveyed. In a simpler word: ADVICE FOR YOU. And, maybe myself? Well, this post is here to stop the advice. I hope you can transfer that to your life whether you are a Type A personality or not, you give yourself advice I know. It is occasionally time to stop training and just live your stuff out. The yellow pad is a great tool but you can’t walk through life with it at your side. You are creative, you are responsible. Why not lay down the cognitive stuff and simply trust yourself for a while. I think you will be proud of yourself in a while when you stop and look back on what you’ve lived. You will also find your mind was more open because you let go. To close, remember this: you can shop for treadmills all day, but until you get on one, you aren’t exercising.