Get Ready to Fail

Think back to the days of school. Elementary, Junior High, High School, or College, doesn’t matter. Anytime when you were being taught and tested.  School is hard because it’s one of the few times in our lives in which we are willingly submitting to being judged. We go in with understanding, expecting, and in some cases hoping, that we will be evaluated.

 It’s an especially harsh situation when you consider the possibility of a harsh or sanctioning judgment. More than anything we fear FAILURE. The dreaded red “F” branded like a scarlet mark of shame on the term paper of our life. In the world of profanity, Failure is thought by many to be worse than……Fruit, Fructose, Friendly’s, Friday…..or any other words that also start with F.

The fear of F can trigger lots of thoughts:

What if I don’t do well?

What if I don’t know as much as I thought I did?

What if they think less of me?

What if I let somebody down? I don’t know what I’d do if I disappointed my teacher/parent/self/spouse/kids/dog/that-guy-at-the-grocery-store-I-always-run-into-don’t-know-his-name-but-he’s-always-so-noce-he-kinda-looks-like-my-grandpa?

What if I’m not as smart as I thought I was?

It’s an interesting reaction, and I think it is a good example of our tendency to work from a specific situation to a general conclusion. This is like inductive reasoning, going from specific observations to general conclusions. Many internet writers have slaved away bravely to help point out that Sherlock Holmes, who claims to be the hero of the deductive process, actually uses inductive reasoning to reach his conclusions. Keep it up internet sleuths. Our deerstalkers are off to you, and not just because you also pointed out that Sherlock Holmes didn't really wear a deerstalker. 

You lied to me

Unlike Sherlock Holmes, who is always correct about the chemical smudge on a sleeve revealing that the owner of said sleeve is a former Russian Cosmosnaut with a balloon fetish, we often arrive at an incorrect conclusion when it comes to our inductions about Failure. We conclude more often than not that a score of F should be interpreted as a Failure as a person. To put it in therapeutic terminology, we stop thinking that we Failed at the test (or project) and start thinking that we are a Failure. And we use that conclusion to fructose up our self-esteem.

Let me point out what I think Failure actually represents.

I Failed:

A test (or course, or project, etc)

In a certain school

On a certain day

In a certain subject

Within a certain subset of that subject

…………………………..

That’s ... it……

          I didn’t fail at life. I didn’t fail at being smart. I didn’t fail at being a human person. I simply failed at something. And failing at something Fridaying happens in life. It isn’t something that is avoidable, not completely.

                When we accept the label of Failure onto our own identity, we are giving far too much credit to the test, project, course, assignment, kangaroo boxing match, or whatever it was. And we are running a far greater risk.

I failed just by stepping into the ring

               

             When I was a student at Weber State University, I failed a course. It was a Criminal Justice course I took online during one of the busiest semesters of my life. I was overburdened and failing to do things in their proper order. Somehow I kidded myself that all would be well in the course, as long as I didn’t look at it too closely. This has always been a bad strategy, one that I have tried with my bank account as well.

                At semester’s end I logged into my student account, possibly for the first time, to view my grades. There it was all harsh and ugly, like a pool of blood in a snowy field:

F

                Come one people, why is it always red? It’s on a computer screen, you could make it look like whatever.

This was a blow to my identity. I have always been a good student, and receiving that grade made me feel somehow lesser. But it was a good experience overall. Thanks to a good support system and some introspection I found something useful in the experience. It probably didn’t hurt that I was always taking Psychology courses (seriously, if you want too much personal insight, become a counseling major).

                I learned that I tend to take on too much, get mixed up in my priorities, and become overwhelmed. And if I don’t manage that carefully then there is a cost to my performance. Luckily I have internalized that lesson now to the point where I never do it anymore. Just ask my wife, she’ll vouch for that.

                Nah, I’m just fruiting with you. I still do that.

                Learning this about myself didn’t change my nature, but it alerted me to an important blind spot in my personality, something I have to watch for as I plan out my life and decide which projects, plans, secret missions, or social engagements I accept. And without the cost, without paying the price of the F-word, I wouldn’t have learned the lesson.

                So now my challenge is to celebrate the reality of my Failures, to try and move quickly past the sting of the fresh bloody wound (seriously, why all the red?) and find the hidden lesson to help me find the path to a more pleasant, unfailing words, maybe even one beginning with an S.

                Like Saffron…

A Sheet of pristine and unique beauty. A work of art beyond the ability of human mind to invent or human hand to fashion. A glittering spectacle of the majesty of nature, fractal patterns forming spontaneously.

I destroy it in about 30 seconds.

I draw the plastic scraper up and down, about 8-10 passes should do it. The beauty is gone forever, never to be replicated on this earth. Sometimes I pass a large shovel up and down my driveway, scooping up irreplaceable objects unlike any ever before created, and throw them into the street.

I mean….off to the side of my mailbox. Don’t shovel snow into the street kids…

Don’t blame me; I’m late getting to the office.

I stopped the other day to consider the interesting relationship I have with snowflakes and ice crystals. I was preparing to leave home early in the morning, mindlessly going through the ritual of snowflake destruction, when I looked closely at the ice crystals of my car window. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but I is dazzling. Especially if you catch them in between the hard frozen stage and the time when they are still somewhat distinct from each other. They are wonderful.

This wasn’t the first time I’d done something like this. I like to watch my windshield while it is snowing, from inside the car. Whenever I stop at a red light I watch for individual snowflakes landing on the glass, and try to see the tiny little patterns, the icy little arms jutting off in every direction, before they melt gently into a drop of water.

I live in the Western part of the country, where we depend upon snowfall to supply us with water throughout the Spring and Summer. So in a way that droplet of water that the snowflake leaves behind is also beautiful. It’s a different kind of beauty, less immediately impressive but also more important. It’s like comparing the spectacle of diamonds to the comfort of food. They can both make you feel something.

My moment of clarity with my driver’s side window made me think about the many similar moments I probably miss every day. I missed the beauty of the snowflakes by being in a hurry and by worrying about things not happening in the current moment. If that’s all it takes to miss the beauty around me, I’m probably missing a lot.

Once something happens it’s gone. It won’t re-happen, at least not the same way. This is a great threat to every one of my generation and younger. We use a lot of time, energy, money, and technology to preserve the moments in our lives. And the results are often great. I love using Instagram as my journal of vacations. I love the fact that I can watch He Man, a cartoon from my youth, on Netflix right now. But sometimes we need to admit that the best moments are uncapturable.

Laughing and joking with my wife.

Playing a game with my daughter (she always says “Do you want to play a board game? It’s a perfect time to play a board game!).

Talking to my son (he’s 10 and loooooves to talk about stuff, very interested in the world).

A patient of mine who finally is ready to trust someone, chooses me.

Walking the dog.

Eating a great bacon and egg sandwich
(I was hungry when I wrote this and took a break to buy a bacon and egg sandwich).

       Christopher Morley wrote a book a long time ago called “The Haunted Bookshop,” in which Roger Mifflin, the proprietor of an old (but notably un-haunted) bookstore, explains how he learned to stop hating washing dishes. He recounts initial resistance to his wife’s insistence that the chore be his. Then he describes his attempts trying to rig up a stand in order to give him, the avid reader, a chance to read a book whilst washing. Then he happens upon an idea:

“While I soused and wallowed among pots and pans. I used to comfort myself with two lines of Keats:

'The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores——'

Then a new conception of the matter struck me. It is intolerable for a human being to go on doing any task as a penance, under duress. No matter what the work is, one must spiritualize it in some way, shatter the old idea of it into bits and rebuild it nearer to the heart's desire. How was I to do this with dish-washing?

"I broke a good many plates while I was pondering over the matter. Then it occurred to me that here was just the relaxation I needed. I had been worrying over the mental strain of being surrounded all day long by vociferous books, crying out at me their conflicting views as to the glories and agonies of life. Why not make dish-washing my balm and poultice?

"When one views a stubborn fact from a new angle, it is amazing how all its contours and edges change shape! Immediately my dishpan began to glow with a kind of philosophic halo! The warm, soapy water became a sovereign medicine to retract hot blood from the head; the homely act of washing and drying cups and saucers became a symbol of the order and cleanliness that man imposes on the unruly world about him. I tore down my book rack and reading lamp from over the sink.

                                                                                (Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop, 1919)

               

                Probably the best description I have ever seen of what Psychologists call Cognitive Reframing, Morley’s use of changing perspective has stuck with me since reading it 5 or 6 years ago, and occasionally helps me to do some dishes.

                So watch for snowflakes and ice crystals, be aware of moments of joy and beauty. Or, more precisely, stop ignoring them. They are, after all, already there. Whether or not they matter is up to you and me.

By the way, patent pending on the word uncapturable………

testing

Dwight Hurst is listed at AllTherapist.com

The 2 Stages of It's my Fault

2 things happen when I realize something is my fault. One feels bad and one feels good.

They aren’t mutually exclusive, and one usually happens before the other. Like stages in the evolution of feeling bad. And then good. It's a graduated reaction. 

Before I tell you what they are, I should explain what I mean by “fault.” It’s a strong word, a word we are taught to fear. And, like fear, its one of the "F" words. Fault, fear, failure...you can probably think of some others.
Failure, much like fault, is taught to us as a nasty, personally wounding word. We always picture it as if it were drawn with a big red pen across the “How I Spent my Summer Vacation,” essay of our lives. If I fail, if I am at fault, if I am afraid, then I have a huge problem. That’s my emotional takeaway. 

But the problem with this line of reasoning is that I do fail, I am often at fault, and I am afraid. Quite a lot. There are many problems in my life that involve my decisions, my choices, my insecurities. I contribute frequently to my own suffering. It’s not pleasant to admit it, but it is important.

And.....it's actually a good thing.

Because of these two stages.

Suspense building statement here.......and........go:

The first stage is Pain.

The second is Power.

                When I realize that I am playing a role in my own problems, I always feel Pain first. It stings to realize that my suffering is partially of my own doing. Take anger as an example. If I am frustrated with a family member, a friend, or just some random stranger (probably while driving) I enjoy the regular human feelings of defensiveness and blame. Who doesn’t? These are popcorn feelings. I know they aren't good for me but I love sitting down with a punch-bowl sized bucket of them, drenched in butter. For those of you who prefer allegory to metaphor, lets make the butter justification and the salt.....hmmmm....indignation.

                Eventually those feelings cool down and I realize my role in the problem. I realize:

                “Holy cow, I was yelling at the kids because I had a bad day.”

                “Oh, I snapped at her when she just asked a question.”

                “Maybe I cut him off…”

                Or whatever. Feel free to fill in your own version of these epiphany moments.

And it hurts! I don't want to minimize the discomfort of this stage. It causes guilt, shame, sorrow, and other insightful emotions. These are all nasty green leafy feelings. They’re probably good for me, but I choke through the serving on my plate only because somebody once told me that I should.

This stage, I have found, can last a long time. In fact, we can often stall in this stage. We can move into it, build a home there, and spend all of our time in emotional pain. Sometimes this even causes a relapse backwards to the blame and defensiveness that felt so much better. Denying the realization of our own involvement becomes our salve.

Or we can move to stage 2.

I call the next stage Power. If I can stomach the healthy, but distasteful, feeling of the Pain stage, I get to feeling better when I realize this all important truth: if I am at fault, that means I have the power to change things.

If I play a role in my suffering, and I now have realized it, then I can change what I am doing to perpetuate that role. If I yell at my kids because I had a bad day, then I can prepare myself before I walk in the house the next time I had a bad day. If I get mad at other drivers for not doing what I want, regardless of whether I am in the right or not, I can practice questioning my reaction next time, something like:

“Do I really have the right of way, or am I just driving like a jackass?”

Think about this second stage, and how freeing it can be. If I am getting mad at my wife because of something I am bringing to the table, then I can work on letting go of it even if she doesn’t change anything she is doing! All of a sudden I go from being a powerless victim of circumstance to a stalwart captain of my destiny.

I think the appeal of regression to defensiveness often beckons to me to forget the famous quote by Charles Swindoll:

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”

It’s so easy to forget that nobody guaranteed me a path free from thorns and brambles. In fact, there is a lot of reason to believe in the opposite; that life will in fact be quite difficult, requiring me to secure every step through struggle. When I remember that these two stages exist it makes me stop searching for someone to blame. My struggle, still often replete with pain, somehow becomes less daunting. Instead of filling with despair I fill with hope, and await the transition from one stage to the next. 

Anxious much?

I make the left turn immediately before the right turn that takes me into my driveway. My head is buzzing with caffeine and adrenaline. The caffeine I ingested a few hours ago, to stay alert. I’m a lightweight with stimulants, apparently. The adrenaline probably comes from that general wired feeling you get after a long day.

My anxiety is fully active, and comes at me the way it always does. First I notice the small stone chip at the bottom of my windshield, berate myself for not getting it fixed before the winter. This leads to the thought about the broken driver’s side windshield wiper I have not yet taken to the repair shop.

“Thank goodness it’s not snowing tonight,” I tell myself automatically. “What would you do if it were, stupid?”

5 more self-defeating thoughts hit me before I switch off the car.

This is an anxious night for me. I know where it comes from and that I shouldn’t listen to it. I take a few moments to calm down before going in the house. The looming next project in my day, parenting, will bring with it a million anxiety triggers. If I walk in in full anxiety mode I’ll run face first into reminders of my faults as a provider, time-scheduler, spouse, playmate, and homework helper. No one will say anything like that; our family doesn’t work that way. I’ll just be saying these things to myself. And it isn’t fair to my wife and children to take this feeling out on them. I do that often enough to know it doesn't make anything better.

I actively ignore the drive to address each of these problems, knowing this to be a fool’s errand in my current state of mind. The real task at hand is not to kill the dragon. It is to sooth the savage beast. I breathe deeply and just try to focus on calming down, letting everything else go for the moment. Nowadays I have gotten pretty good at reducing anxiety, if I can catch it early. It doesn’t guide my decision making the way it used to.

-           -           -           -           -           -           -           -           -           -           -           -

I was wondering about anxiety the other day, and about self-doubt. A member of a group therapy session I was facilitating asked me, and another therapist in the room, what the difference was between us and him. He had said something like “I look at successful people like you and wonder how you do it, and why I can’t.” I responded with something therapeutic (hopefully), something focused on his feelings about himself. It was his group after all, not mine. But his question stayed with me, made me wonder about the answer.

Firstly I don’t view him as unsuccessful. Without revealing specifics, he is a young man with high intelligence and a bright future ahead of him. I reject the idea that I am better than him in any iteration.

Secondly, I wonder sometimes how to communicate to people in his shoes the feelings that I cope with myself. I don’t want to unbalance the relationship of therapist and client by focusing too much on my experience. I don’t want to minimize the depth of his suffering by trying to compare my own worsts to his. Who can tell which is worse anyway? And if we could what would be the point?

But I do believe that we all have the holes in our armor. I take some peace from the idea that we all have some days and weeks (or longer) where we doubt and doubt and doubt.

            Anxiety is a brutal obstacle to happiness. Effective as a survival response, it can badly hurt us when we are not really in a life-or-death situation. The ancient panic switch in our brain transforms moments of self-doubt into world ending crises. And the same quick-as-lighting, damn-the-torpedoes racing thoughts that can save us on a battlefield can make us prone to some pretty poor decision making in more typical situations.

            Take my drive home as an example. Realizations of things that simply needed to be done underwent a dramatic transformation to become seemingly logical reasons for psychological self-abuse. That by the way, is a clue that we are in the midst of anxiety: what is actually important becomes suddenly urgent.

            

            Anxiety is tricky as well. It doesn’t play fair. Only in the throes of anxiety can we simultaneously tell ourselves (as I was doing that night) that we should have: a) gotten home earlier, and b) stayed at work to earn more money. Both at the same time! In that moment of racing thoughts I was searching for confirmation of a terrifying foregone conclusion that I suck at this thing called life.  

            Thankfully that night I was able to correctly label my thoughts and calm myself down rather than answer the call to (rather inelegant) action. I have not always been able to do so, and I won’t always be able to in the future. In that way my young client and I are very much alike. I think a lot of us are. Attacks of anxious self-accusation will always come and go. The mission is not to avoid all anxiety. It is simply to identify these times and not allow the anxiety to call the shots in a non-crisis situation. When we do this, we become successful.  

New Short Story

Hey all!

I just completed a short story called "Nameless," that is now available on Kindle for $1.99.

It's a story studying an interesting character but also examining the link between crime, punishment, and redemption. I'll be interested to see what everyone thinks of it.

Trigger warning for survivors of abuse, while the story does not include any acts of abuse or molestation the existence of these things is admitted to. A sex offender is a character, hopefully presented in a thought provoking way. Nothing that I would consider graphic or overt.

Currently working on a few projects related ot the following ideas. Post if you have feedback on these ideas:

1. A zombie story set in a hotel with a manager who is desperately trying to cling onto the only life he has ever known. I don't know, are zombies out now? Let me know your thoughts.

2. A Sci-Fi story, sort of a post-apocalyptic/rebuilding society story with a noir flair, an agent of the newly remade FBI as a main character.

3. A murder mystery in which the protagonist is a vending machine.

4. A story of Fanfiction gone out of control (more to follow on this...)