Photofreak22 wrote:Leo Volont wrote:“First, about your career choice -- I’m glad you decided to reach higher than nursing.”
I took AP Psych in high school, but thought that I could do psychiatric nursing or something like that. In all honesty, nursing bored me because of all the small, seemingly “useless” things they teach you before you actually go into the real nursing. One of my classmates mom is a nurse, and she said she didn’t have to know anything we were learning. I know it’s all good to know, but even my Anatomy teacher (who is a doctor) said that he didn’t remember it all and kept textbooks around.
Leo Volont wrote: “What strikes me as odd concerning your focus on your father is that one would think that the most likely role model for a young woman would be the mother. Certainly it was not wonderful for you that your father had his imperfections, but the person that you grew up emulating and modelling yourself on was probably your mother, no?”
Since I was six, I’ve been going to church. My mom has never given up her faith, and has been the best role model a daughter could ask for. She’s had a tough life herself, she got divorced twice before marrying my father (her first husband was abusive, her second husband abused drugs), and then she married my father, who doesn’t hit her and doesn’t do drugs, but he used excessive force on my brother and I, and came home angry from work every day. The reason I didn’t mention her is because I basically only mentioned my problems, and my mom has never caused me any problems. She’s been the best mother to me, and has always made sure we had what we needed. But she didn’t sit idliy and let my father act like a maniac, she fought back, sometimes verbally and sometimes physically. She did what she had to do to keep my brother and I safe, I remember at one point we all slept in the same room and she slept with a knife, because she was even afraid of what he might do. He was unpredictable and honestly insane, and we still don’t know why. But he isn’t like that anymore, he’s back in church regularly and only flips out when my little brother (who is now 17) gets physical with him (he also has anger problems, which is why I link my anger most with my father).
Leo Volont wrote: “So the first thing you need to do in order to make things manageable is to discontinue all House Work and Cleaning that isn’t absolutely Life and Death necessary. Many career people who put in long hours and who are very successful live like absolute pigs, simply because they have set realistic priorities. For instance, they can get 6 hours of sleep a night if they don't 'tidy up’ or just 4 and a half hours of sleep if they care about what the nosy neighbors think. Maybe your husband would like to do all of the cleaning. And if it is not important enough to him whereby he would do it all himself, then it is not important enough for him to expect you to do it.”
I hate having a mess, that’s one of the things that sets my anger off too. I ask my husband to help, and he just doesn’t care to. I flip out on him, I just can’t deal with things laying around, dishes not being clean, clothes piling up. I’m also not pleasant when I get less than 6 hours sleep, I can live on it of course, but I’m definitely not nice when I get less than 6 hours of sleep.
Leo Volont wrote: “Your brain can recover, but it will take some serious Cognitive Behavioral work on your part...Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, reduced to its basic parts can be summed up in the words Review, Revise, Rehearse.”
When I took Psychology and my professor taught us about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, that’s immediately what I thought I needed, I just never knew how to go at it. I feel like I’m not good enough to do it myself, and my husband works full time (40-50 hours a week) so he can’t really help me. Plus, he thinks that all problems resolve on their own, which obviously isn’t true. He’s the naive one with his head in the clouds, I’m the one who is grounded and stressed all the time.
Leo Volont wrote: “For instance, “I hate Mondays”. You would dispute that by suggesting to yourself that it could be far worse… “Monday in Somalia” for instance.”
I live by this, and when my husband starts to feel depressed about his work situation, I tell him tons of people have it worse. I realized how blessed I am to have what I have, but it doesn’t make me less angry, if anything it makes me more angry because people out there are suffering. I do try to use that as much as I can, because I know people deal with things that I can’t even imagine.
Leo Volont wrote: “Oh, there is a new therapy I heard about – Eye Movement Desensitization...The instant your jaw muscles tighten, relax them – open your mouth and take a deep breath through your mouth.”
I will definitely try these! After you said something about the jaw muscles being tight, I realized my jaw was tight, even while reading this. I wasn’t angry or anything, I’m just tense all the time. I feel like I’m always on edge, and I don’t really have a reason to be. I think I naturally hold my jaw tight though because my bottom jaw didn’t grow correctly, and shifts when I open my mouth, causing me to keep my mouth closed moreso than others.
Thank you for your long, detailed response! I will definitely apply to techniques you reccomened, hopefully they help.
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Good Morning Phreak (interesting conjunction, huh?)
Good! Your reply was much better than I dared to hope for. Your mother is most admirable and while she may have had her reasons to be sometimes nervous, distracted or edgy while you two were bonding in your infancy (setting up the Social Attachment Format that you would follow for the rest of your life), I would fully expect that she was in fact a very good formative role model for you. So that would mean that you are intrinsically just as good as she is. For instance, your World View, while positive, is also realistic and full of empathy. Right now you may seem to yourself to be ‘damaged goods’ but there is nothing there that can’t be fixed.
Oh, I am not clear about whether I was able to convey to you the basics of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It really is as basically as easy as I had said. I myself had a history of anger and had gone to a Psychologist for it. When he found I was college educated he said “Good, that will save time” and gave me a handbook on Anger Management Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I’m sorry I did not save it, or maybe I had, but it got mixed in with all my other Anger Management Books and I can’t remember which one it is). But my Therapist had no magic wand. For all of our sessions he would ask me about whether I had uncovered any new Bad Habits of Thought or Behavior, and what thoughts and behaviors I planned to replace them with. We would also discuss any instances where I was able to implement these changes, or where I had failed to. Basically my Therapy consisted of the Therapist being supportive of everything that the Book was already telling me to do. And many of the inexpensive Self Help Books are quite effective (but stick to books written by Medical Professionals and stay away from all the New Age crap, until you have a strong background in Anger Management Theory and only wish to read the New Age materials in order to laugh and sneer at it). Regarding myself, my reading a chapter a day from one of all the books that were then on the Market kept me mindful of my Anger Issues and eventually I noticed that the CBT Methodology was substantially changing me for the better. It does take time. Old habits cannot be broken overnight, and new habits take a while to develop. For instance, the Post Op Protocols for Hip Replacement. Because my Hip Replacement had been delayed so long, I was living with the Post Op Protocols for close to a year before I ever got the Operation. What those Protocols are is basically the patient is instructed to keep his or her range of motion within certain bounds in order to prevent accidental dislocation of the new joint. Ordinarily they inform the patients of these Protocols just prior to the operation or even told of them only in their Going Home Instructions. But Motions and Moving are Habitual Behaviors (you drop something and so you bend down to pick it up out of pure kinetic second nature habit) but people forget and so there are dislocations which the Doctors blame on the patients for not following instructions. Crazy, right? Forget all Systems Theory and Models of Learning, and be satisfied that when Failures occur, that Blame can be assigned away from those who are In Charge of assuring that there should be no failures. Anyway, it was because of concerns such as that that I Lived the Post Op Protocols before the operation. It took about 6 months before I was consistently doing naturally and without forethought all that I needed to do in order to not ever accidentally exceed the Protocols. Also, I am an amateur musician and have been all of my adult life. Sometimes for a challenge I will pick up a New Instrument and start over from scratch… I play by ear. Skills build slowly. Within six months I come to understand that I am not wasting my time on a dead end. Within a year I typically begin to get really interesting, but usually within two years it seems like I develop an actual ‘knack’. The Psychologists would attribute this to Neuroplasticity – the brains ability to reallocate or create new neurons and neuro networks in order to perform to new demands and expectations. Also, Neuroplasticity is responsible for stripping away neurons and neuron networks from complexes that have fallen into disuse (where everyone forgets most of their High School French, and complain that while they got an A in Trig, now they wouldn’t know a tangent line if one were to bite them on the butt). So, while the books optimistically talk in terms of ‘weeks, or months’, I would instead suppose that the Smallest Unit of Time you should be thinking in terms of is 6 Months, or Half Years. You would need solid daily commitment to CBT Practice and Attention for six months before you could expect to recognize any solid level of achievement or positive change in your life – that is, where you can acknowledge that Hope is Real and that you are actually getting Good at It at creating a better You.
Perhaps a good place to start is with your Obsessive Compulsive fussiness. Your husband is apparently on board, or maybe he only doesn’t care about whether there is a mess or not because you keep the place immaculate. In any case, it would be great practice for you to take a great deal of the power out of this internal imperative you have for keeping everything neat and clean and all the ducks in a row. Yes, you can argue that Neatness is a Virtue and that Cleanliness is next to Godliness. However, one of the things you learn in Anger Management is that People ALWAYS come up with Great Excuses for everything they feel compelled to do (automatic self-justification is a semi-delusional tendency that all rational people need to guard against). So we have a great deal of Justified Anger and Righteous Indignation that gets people into a lot of trouble or which serves only to make their lives worse, not better. So, while you must certainly recognize the necessity of Limiting Demands on your Time as a necessary ingredient to reducing your total of Life Stressors, you need to prioritize away from housekeeping concerns. You might also consider that your marital relations might improve if you eliminate compulsive housekeeping as a bone of contention between yourself and your husband, whose patience and tolerance for you should not be taken so much for granted. And, as I said, it would be great practice. If you can Prove-In the System and show yourself that it actually works, then you will have greater confidence going forward.
Oh, a quick comment on Nursing. Nursing, as I have seen it is often mostly administrative – Nurses handle the paperwork. This is not to minimize that. Maybe I would still be waiting for my Hip Operation had it not been for a nurse taking it on her own initiative to make a series of phone calls and push for an inquest concerning allocations of funds and the moral ethical implications of a prosthesis vendor freezing the hospital’s credit line for replacement knees and hips. It turns out that around 20 patients had been awaiting surgery because some piece of paper got stuck at the bottom of an Inbox somewhere, and that that Nurse pinging everybody caused the obstructing issues to be expedited through. A Nurse did that. I still remember how much pain I was living with from day to day. She, more than anybody else, brought me relief. I sent her a Christmas Card. Oh, and then I notice variations from Nurse to Nurse. Now recall what you said about all the stuff that people tell you ISN’T that important. Well, it IS important, but only if you know it. It is unfortunate but people who ‘half-ass’ through life think that all anybody needs to know is what they themselves have been able to skate by on. You can believe this until you meet people who REALLY know their jobs. So, don’t get hypnotized by the slackers and the 80% of people whose only ambition in life is to be good enough to get by. They are the place-keepers and the slot-fillers. All the Important Stuff is done by the Skilled and Knowledgeable Top 20%. The Best Companies look for this Skilled Elite. The Worst Companies hire only the place-keepers and the slot-fillers because they come cheaper. You should aim for Personal Excellence. You might not get paid much more for it, but you will find that Like-Minds will gravitate your way. People you respect will likewise respect you. Also, while everyone else might be bored with their jobs, your excellence will stand out so obviously that the Powers That Be will bring you in for special projects and all the Mission Impossibles. It will make you feel like your Life has meaning, even when on the Job.
Well, thanks for giving me your attention. Again, it would be nice if you were to report on your progress. Only seldom do people write in and report on positive changes in their Lives that their attention to Anger Management had fostered. Of course you can understand how such positive reports would give hope to New Members writing in with their problems. It could be their ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.