Mean People Suck

"Mean people suck!"  This was the message on a bumper sticker I first saw many years ago that literally made me laugh out loud at the time.  Such an obvious message...and yet what do any of us do about the "mean people" in our own lives?  Based on my experience as a psychotherapist, I can tell you that the answer to that question is "Not much!" more often than not.  

I continue to be astounding at the numbers of us who can talk a blue streak on most any topic under the sun...but when it comes to appropriately confronting something clearly inappropriate that is said or done right in front of us, we suddenly go mute.  What's up with that?

For one thing, what's up with that is that we are often afraid.  Yes, I said afraid.  If we weren't afraid, why wouldn't we just respond comfortably with "Can you tell me why you just said that?" or "Can you explain to me why you just did that?" immediately after the fact?  We don't ask these questions because we are more afraid of being rejected or judged by our offender(s) than we are about appropriately confronting him or her about their own "bad" behavior.  Do we think that our silence is a good thing in such circumstances?  How is it good?  If anything, we have just taught the offender in that moment how we agree with what they said...or what they did...which they already ASSUMED we'd be o.k. with in the first place!  When someone is mean to someone else in our presence or to us directly in whatever form that takes, how is keeping our mouths shut the right thing to do?  It is not.  Period.

I remember the kid (young man) who once referred to his friend as a racial slur in front of me.  I looked at him without missing a beat and asked, "Why did you say Joe was a (insert racial slur here)?"  "Are you a (insert racial slur here) too?"  His reaction to me was clear;  he realized he made a big boo boo by sayin' what he did in front of me....because he didn't expect me to NOT be o.k. with what he just said about his friend.  This is how it is when people say and do mean things, wrong things, bad things, inappropriate things, perverse things, (whatever! things) in front of us while also assuming it's "no big deal" to say or to do in front of us.  Don't we get that yet?

Many times, this is reason enough to speak up when we are confronted by someone else's offensive words and/or behavior. Beyond the fact that we didn't cause their problems, we can't control their problems, and we sure can't cure their problems---how is it they figure you or I are just like them?  I don't know about you, but I do NOT want to be associated with someone who "assumes" that I accept abusive behavior because they feel so free to do it in front of me---or direct it at me personally.  By speaking up in these moments and asking why did you say or do that...we are also saying please don't do that in front of ME anymore.  Confronting inappropriate behavior doesn't mean you have to cure anybody of anything;  it just makes clear how you don't want  to listen to it or see it "again" in your presence.   Most importantly, it reminds the offender that they don't really "know" you to the extent they had previously assumed. 

What we don't get is that emotional intimacy and/or feeling "close" doesn't stem from putting up with or remaining silent about another person's abusive patterns of conduct.  We also don't get that when we DO put up with another person's abusive patterns of conduct, we kill a little bit of ourselves in the process.  This is not a good thing.

Nex time you are tempted to give someone a pass or let something go that you've let pass and go many times before, think twice before you keep your mouth shut and ignore the obvious.  Just try asking out loud:  "Why did you say that?" or "Can you explain why you just did that?"  You might find that your offender(s) may, over time, actually learn how to check themselves before they wreck themselves in your presence ever again...



 

Flirting With the Abyss...

Last post, I talked about the power of bad influences and how so many of us are completely unaware of what our own bad influences are...or have been in the past.  As I have said many times in therapy, if you hold a live frog over a boiling pot of water, it doesn't exactly react as if it is ready to jump right in there.  It recoils, it wriggles, and it fights to stay out of the pot.  YET...if you hold a live frog over a pot of cool and undisturbed water, it'll jump right in.  Everything is fine until the heat slowly gets turned up to the point when the frog dies without ever realizing what happened to it.  THIS is what it is like to flirt with the abyss of "bad influences" in our daily lives.  Nobody wants to acknowledge anything or anyone as having some degree of power over them, especially when that "power" is negative in nature.  Yet when we jump right in and don't think about that (whatever "it" is that represents our bad influence(s)!)..we will undoubtedly end up dying in some way, shape, or form.

The abyss is like the giant sinkhole that appeared in front of James Franco's house in his "This Is The End" movie.  People (even Rhianna!) were just falling in like dominos and nobody could do anything to stop it.  Except in our case and in real life, we can stop it.  Our problem is that we don't stop it;  we keep taking steps down into the abyss for a little while...and then step back up and out of it.  We continue this pattern over and over again throughout life.  At some point, we step further down into the abyss than we ever have before.  Then what feels like suddenly out of nowhere, we have been yanked to the bottom.  As if a giant hand has appeared from the depths to grab us around the ankle and pull us down completely.  When that happens, we are goners.  We are not the same person we thought ourselves to be;  we have cooked our own goose.

What constitutes these "abyss" moments in life?  Well, for some people, it is a particular person who just happens to come and go with different faces attached.  For example, who hasn't heard the infamous, "I don't know what it is, but I've always been attracted to bad boys?"  Uh...hello!  I know what it is!  It's a culmination of all those bad-boy influences that may have started in your crib...in your classroom...or in your neighborhood that you never noticed---and still don't!  Listen, I get it.  "Bad boys" and/or "bad girls" can be a lot of fun.  Yet when it is their hand yanking you deep down into the abyss when they do....how did that relationship with your own version of "the bad boy/girl" work out for you really?  This dynamic is very sad because just by it's very nature, you have allowed some other person to influence you more than you influence yourself!  Oh by the way, this is at the heart of any malignant and highly codependent relationship I'm just sayin...

Anything in this life that has the power to pull us down and influence negative changes in our life constitute our abyss moments.  Remember the first time you had a drink of alcohol?  How old were you?  Who were you with?  Who provided the alcohol?  Were you alone?  Why did you, on that day or night above all others, choose to drink alcohol as you did?  How much do you literally drink now on a weekly basis?  How many 5 oz. drinks of wine, how many cans of beer, how many shots, how many mixed drinks?  Now for some, these questions sound completely irrelevant or silly to even read.  But to the person with a drinking problem, they are crucial to understanding how and when the bad influence(s) associated with drinking came about in the first place---and how they have remained.  Just because something is "legal" does NOT mean that it is not a bad influence on you and your life right now and in this very moment.

Recently, I was introduced to "Monster High" dolls.  Do you know these dolls?  "Be Yourself.  Be Unique.  Be a Monster."  Okay?  This off the Mattel website that manufactures these dolls.  I mean it's one thing to celebrate one's flaws and embrace them, but I sure could have thought of a thousand other ways to do that without the bad influence attached.  Even more disturbing, when a five year old owns several of them and is ALSO Justin Bieber's biggest fan.  Or how about the kids who receive "cigarettes" at the Heart Attack Grille" in Las Vegas because, as the owner states, he's just offering what customers want...even when it's obviously bad for all involved.

The seven deadly sins were called that for a reason;  there are only so many ways we can "do" and "be" bad as people.  Seven deadly sins and four major vices;  that's all there is in the bottom of anyone's abyss.  Learning to step up and out of the abyss starts by living in the truth rather than in the fiction about yourself and your lifestyle.  If you need help with that, give me a call. 

Until next post...







 

Bad Influences....

This is one of those topics very few want to discuss with a clear head.  Who are or were the "bad influences" in your own life going as far back as you can remember?  Some of us are living with our "bad influences" right now (our partner, our spouse, our parent(s), our "friend"(s), or some other individual we already know who is more "bad" for us than good...).  Others of us ARE the "bad influence" in our own lives and in the lives of others and we know it.  For purposes of today's blog post, I am going to limit this discussion to those who have one or more "bad influences" in their life and just don't think about "it" all that much....

Just today I was watching a portion of a movie entitled "Smashed" at the moment when a girl had just picked up a random stranded female in front of a bar who begged for a ride home.  Once in the car together, the passenger asked if she could smoke.  Turns out what the passenger began to smoke was a rock of crack.  Because both driver and passenger were drunk, the passenger offered a hit off her pipe to the driver saying "This is amazing!  You'll never be the same again!"  In my mind I was screaming, "Don't do it you dumb *$@# it's CRACK!"...but of course that wasn't going to happen.  Needless to say, in this particular cinematic moment, a random stranger introduced another random stranger to a drug that would take them both to hell and kept them there....

Although that was only a movie, I have plenty of "real life" examples to back up my assertion that bad influences bring NOTHING good into your life, let alone when you won't even let yourself identify who and what they are!

Let's start with one's inputs.  When you wake up each day, where are you...who are you with...why are you there...and what do you allow yourself to listen to/watch as you prepare for your day?  As a younger person, I remember counting down the days until I could move out of my parents' home, which was more of a gulag than anything else.  Is the place where you live now a place that is also your true sanctuary...your place of peace and rest...a place where you feel safe and secure?  If not, your living quarters and arrangements may be exerting more of a "bad influence" over your than you realize.