The “Yeah-Buts” on the Heels of Choice
Emily was really excited about her trip to Europe. She was imagining how much fun she would have, and couldn’t wait to go. During a conversation with her mother-in-law, she started to get anxious. Dorothea was talking about terrorists, saying that we were on the brink of war, and it could break out any day.
Emily panicked; right on the heels of her decision to go came the “yeah-buts” egged on by Dorothea.
“Yeah-but” we may be taken hostage!
“Yeah-but” we may never see our families again!
“Yeah-but” we may get killed!
The “Yeah-buts” had clearly taken over, and ruined her vision of magical episodes tripping through castles, eating croissants and drinking café au lait. She took a nosedive and rapidly started to plummet into despair.
“Yeah-buts” lock on to the worst possible situation and rub your face in it. Whenever you make a choice, the first step is the rush of excitement, followed by the fantasy, then comes a startling dose of reality. When this hits, the “yeah-buts” engage.
Toss Me a Life Preserver, I’m Going Under!
When you are sinking, you need to reach out for help. If you don’t reach out, people may not know that you need a helping hand. Reaching out to a family member, a friend, a coach, or a therapist is critical to your wellbeing. Good friends are there not just when you are in good shape; they are there when you are down, sick, and in need of them.
The next chapter will give you techniques and tools that are proven effective to ward off Negaholism. This is your own personal took kit, full of antidotes to Negaholism.
7
The Antidotes To the
Beat-up Syndrome
Ending self-diminishment is a process that requires daily maintenance, possibly for the rest of your life. Think of it like brushing or flossing your teeth. It’s a day-at-a-time approach to managing your relationship with yourself that is aimed at a positive mental image, emotional stability, and a way of treating yourself that is life affirming.
There are several techniques and tools that you must actively use every day in order for these antidotes to work. Each tool is designed to establish, develop, or solidify your essential relationship with yourself. All of the tools listed in this book have been proven effective over forty years of utilization with people on five continents. They can and will work for you too, however, you must commit to do them. Don’t prejudge them. Don’t evaluate them as too simplistic for you. Most of them are simple, easy, and quick. Do each one and give them all a chance. After all, the internal beat-up syndrome isn’t all that sophisticated.
What is most important is your attitude and determination to break old patterns and transcend your old behaviors. Don’t accept these techniques because I recommended them, but rather experiment with them. See how they look and feel and if you like them, do them more often. If you don’t like them, then take them off your list. Experiment!
#1 Be Patient With Yourself
You need to believe that you can overcome this tendency or addiction to negativity, and you will! You must give yourself permission to be “imperfect” and to understand that from time to time you will backslide. You must reach out for support when you slide, knowing that you are fighting a behavior battle that you learned and has been reinforced for many years and has eventually become habitual. You cannot overcome ingrained habits overnight, nor is it fair to expect that from you. Be patient with yourself!
#2 Ten Acknowledgments a Day …
At the end of the day, take a piece of paper and write down a minimum of ten accomplishments for that day. Make certain to let yourself know that you are pleased with yourself for your ability to get things done.
• List everything you did that you are happy about
• List everything you are grateful for
• List all of your blessings, especially those you take for granted
• If you had a day when you think you didn’t get much accomplished, dwell on what you did get done, and notice the small things
• Shine the spotlight on what you did right, not on what you didn’t accomplish
“Ten acknowledgments a day, keep the beat-ups away!”
#3 Good News/Bad News List
This is a first cousin to the acknowledgment list. It helps to put things into perspective. Make a list of things you are pleased about along with things that you could be worried or upset about. When your mind becomes fixated on the negative, make yourself a balance sheet to see things from a balanced perspective.
#4 Pats on the Cheek
In the morning, after you have gone into the bathroom:
• Look in the mirror for thirty seconds. Don’t find fault with yourself, and don’t pick yourself apart: your hair, skin, eyebrows, or teeth
• Just “be” with yourself, by looking into your eyes
• Feel whatever you experience
• Notice what you feel
• At the end of thirty seconds say, “Hi, honey, it’s going to be all right. I’m here with you and I will never leave you. You can count on me. You are important to me. We’re in this together.“ You can say any combination of the above. Even if all you say is, “Hi, honey,” that is a good start. You can gradually add phrases that make you feel comfortable. The important thing is to take the thirty seconds to connect with yourself. Do this in the morning and in the evening, the last thing before going to bed. If you tend to forget, put a post-it note on the bathroom mirror to remind you.
#5 Managing Daily Stress
Self-concept is at the crux of stress-related conditions. Balance means feeling in charge, up to the challenge, competent to handle the tasks at hand. When you feel balanced, you know that you have the skills, and motivation to do what is required. When you feel this sense of confidence and competence, it reinforces your sense of self, your self-esteem.
Conversely, when you feel unable, inadequate, or ill- equipped to meet the immediate challenges, then you feel less confident and capable. Your self-esteem takes a beating. When you feel unable or inadequate, it taxes you and puts a lot of stress on your system. Stress = out of balance = the organism in trauma; feeling out of control, unable to meet the challenges or the tasks at hand.
The development, promotion, and reinforcement of self-esteem is an important aspect of stress management and totally antithetical to high stress states. Stress sneaks up on you when you least expect it. You become so immersed in whatever problem you are tacking at the moment that you completely lose sight of yourself, your needs, and your wellbeing. When this happens, it’s as if stress has “slimed” you. All of a sudden, it’s everywhere, and you never saw it coming.
It takes some attention, as well as heightened awareness, to catch stress before it catches you. To do this, get to know your stress indicators, as if they are your smoke detectors that will help you avert a fire. There are three checkpoints from which to monitor stress. First, the most desirable, is to detect stress from a preventive standpoint, anticipating it before it takes hold. Second, if you missed it before the fact, then you have the option of catching it midstream. By catching it midstream, you can cut the attack off before it takes over. If you have been afflicted by stress and its devastating effects. You can go see your doctor, a stress-management specialist, or simply indulge in mood enhancers.
It is important to recognize the early-warning signals that indicate that stress is a concern. Before stress is induced, get to know the warning signs, the lights on your dashboard. What signals indicate that stress is anticipated? Do your shoulders become tight? Do you bite your nails, do you get headaches, do you get an acid stomach, or does your jaw ache from tension? Do you have sleepless nights? Sure signs of stress anticipation are: changes in sleeping, eating, sexual activity, irritability, anxiety, or short-temperedness. Here are some hot tips about stress, how to notice it, how to manage it, and what to do when it has become a problem. Check over this list and identify your early stress signa
ls.
• Pain in the neck
• Tapping feet, finger, pencils
• Headaches, tightness in chest
• Dry mouth, clenched jaw
• Shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat
• Tight shoulders, dizziness
• Lower back pain, cold or clammy hands
• Holding your breath, appetite change
• Irritability, short temper, shallow breathing
• Fatigue, sleeplessness
• Excessive use of stimulants or depressants
If you can detect stress early on, then you can catch it early. What are your symptoms?
#6 Self-Questioning to Get to the Source
Stop whatever you are doing and take a minute for yourself. At this point, self-inventory is appropriate. You may have become so caught up in your life that you have forgotten to check in with yourself. In order to assess what is going on inside you, you can ask yourself these four simple questions to get to the heart of the matter.
• What am I feeling?
• What do I want?
• What will it take for me to feel back in charge of my life?
• What do I need to do to take care of myself right now?
If stress sneaks up and seizes hold of you, then you might what to consider stress-reducing devices:
• Mediation
• Deep breathing after stopping everything
• Progressive relaxation
• Tension/relaxation
• Listen to favorite music
• Energy release
• Speak up for yourself
• Communicate your feelings
• State your wants
After stress relief, you have a whole new opportunity to assess your lifestyle:
• When do I experience the most stress?
• In which situations do I feel the most stressed?
• With whom?
• Where?
Consider what you can do to avoid stress in the future. Ask yourself, “Am I willing to take control of those situations in my life which cause me stress? Am I willing to change my attitude? Am I willing to change my response to the stimulus? Am I willing to change a recurring theme that reinforces itself? What changes am I able/willing to make?”
If you are not willing or able to make any lifestyle changes, then you must deal with the signals, or work with the tools to manage stress. When stress has gotten the best of you, then your self-esteem weakens.
Self-esteem is developed and reinforced under the following conditions:
• When you know clearly what you want
• When you cause your desired results to happen
• When you take action based on your own intrinsic motives, desires, and intentions
• When you overcome obstacles and challenges and make the seemingly impossible happen
• When you live up to the standards and expectations you have established for yourself
Stress, generally speaking, is essential to the functioning of an organism, but too much stress will tax the organism and render it ineffective. When you experience too much stress, you are in pain, be it emotional, psychological, or physical. When you experience enough pain, you seek relief. Relief often comes in the form of a mood enhancer. The thought might be, “I just want to feel better,” or “I wish the pain would go away,” or “I need a …” Stress is the key to addictive behaviors. When something stressful happens, it activates the neurotransmitters in your brain. If too many neurotransmitters are activated, you become overwhelmed. This in turn motivates you to engage in activities that will reduce the stress, and alter the feelings. Overwhelm + stress + addictive tendencies = Negaholism!
#7 Mood Enhancers
If you find yourself taking the same mood enhancer three times a week or more, ask yourself if you could stop taking it today and avoid withdrawal. If the answer is “Yes,” put yourself to the test and stop taking the enhancer for four weeks in a row. If after one month you yearn to take it again, go ahead, but keep using the same test on yourself to keep you honest, in balance, and un-addicted. If the answer is “No,” then reach out for help from others. Whenever you cannot control your cravings…when you engage, your level of indulgence, and the stopping of an activity or substance, you can consider yourself addicted. When you find that you have developed an addiction…
1. Acknowledge the fact to yourself
2. Ask yourself what you are willing to do about it
3. Reach out to a coach, a support group, or seek professional help to overcome it
#8 Reframing Reality
One of the ways Negaholism display itself is by obsessing on the negative perspective. Depending upon how you look at the glass of water, it is either half empty or half full.
The art of reframing is an acquired talent. You take the current situation, in which you feel like an innocent victim, and rewrite the incidents from your past so you appear to be the author of the scenario. Put yourself in the center of the story and make yourself the leading man or woman of the plot. Delete any trace of victim, scapegoat, or martyr from your story. Then decree that certain incidents happened because you wanted them to happen, almost as if you willed them to occur. Then, invent reasons that justify you having designed this scene in your movie.
Develop the skill of perceiving situations, events and circumstances in your life as if they were deliberately designed that way. It is as if there is an inherent gift in every occurrence.
A client named Lisa complained, “I wasted seven years, I moved seven times. I changed jobs seven times. I left a marriage. I couldn’t make up my mind. I was shiftless, and unable to make a commitment. I was confused, scattered, and all over map.”
I commented: “How does it make you feel to repeat the past in the tone you conveyed to me?”
She said, “Awful, just awful. I feel like a useless person, and I feel very bad about myself.”
I asked her to consider shifting her perspective ever so slightly. She asked for clarification.
I said, “Try this out: I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing every minute. When I had learned the lessons for me to learn, I moved on to the next situation. I experienced an enormous amount, and grew tremendously those seven years. I was experimenting, and experiencing so much of life. I was vital and alive. I never got stuck in any situation. I simply told the truth and moved on. Most of all I was true to myself.”
I next asked Lisa if this version was true.
“Yes, but I’ve never looked at it that way!” she said.
I suggested that she stop finding fault with the choices she had made in her past and look for the validity of her actions. Then I asked her how she felt after hearing the way I reframed her past history.
“Great! I like feeling smart and having made the right choices.”
The argument I hear most frequently about reframing is: “But that’s just rationalizing and explaining. What use is that? You’re deceiving yourself. If you really blew it, then learn to live with it. Don’t make it into a pious platitude.”
Own up to every blunder, mistake, and tragic flaw that you caused or inadvertently caused; own it, learn the lesson, release it, and move on. In every other case, where you are harping on your “mistakes,” reframe it and hold the incident as the “right” thing in the grand scheme. After all, you’re still here, probably no great damage was done, the others survived, and it may have been for the best after all.
A client named Liz lost her father unexpectedly. All the children attended the funeral and afterward learned that their father had written them all out of the will. Liz was devastated. Not only did she have to deal with grief, loss, and sadness, then on top of it all, confusion, anger, and disillusionment were added to her feelings of loss. For two years she racked her brain trying to figure out why her father had done this, what was he trying to get across? Finally she realized that she was stuck in this incident. She couldn’t move forward in her relationship with me
n because she simply didn’t trust them. She realized that she could either beat herself for something she may have done to alienate her father, or reframe the entire incident and see it as right, appropriate, and just. She worked on this for a long time, and came up with the fact that not having inherited her father’s money really empowered her. She didn’t have that cushion to depend upon, nor did she rely on anyone else’s resources to get her what she wanted in her life. She decided to see the disinheritance as a boost to her self-confidence and her ability to make things happen.
#9 There’s Got to Be a Pony
A story about identical twin boys who were having a birthday exemplified a point better than anything I could say. The boys were identical in appearance, but in other ways they were quite different, even opposites. Both boys were very excited and eager to have their presents. Since they were twins, they always received identical gifts. The parents led the first boy blindfolded away from the house and over to his present. The other boy remained back at the house in anticipation. When the first boy got to the present, he looked in front of him and could hardly believe his eyes. He exclaimed, “A barn full of manure! What kind of present is that? Why did you give me that? I deserve better. What an awful present!” and the first boy hung his head, kicked the dirt, slumped away, and sulked off alone. The parents went back and got the second boy and led him to his present, also blind-folded. When the blindfold was taken off, the second boy jumped for joy, grabbed a shovel, and madly started digging. He was excited beyond belief and dug as frantically as you can imagine. The parents asked why he was so excited. He exclaimed, a little out of breath, “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”
The moral of the story is that you don’t ever have to take anything at face value, things aren’t always what they appear to be, and when life gives you manure, instead of seeing it as excrement consider looking at it as fertilizer!
Negaholics Page 12