The Sea of Trees...

Recently, I heard about the Sea of Trees which exists at the northwest base of Mt. Fuji in Japan.  This particular forest is 14 square miles.  It's been likened to viewing a literal ocean of trees.  The forest floor consists primarily of volcanic rock and it is so dense, it is very easy to get lost in it.  It is a popular attraction for thousands of people who go into the forest to hike, tour the forest, and to commit suicide each year.  As some go into the forest making sure to mark their path with plastic tape so as not to get lost...others enter so as not to come back out again.  Depending on one's own perspective, the Sea of Trees can be viewed as one of the most beautiful places on earth to visit and enjoy;  to others, it is a place of death and yurei (angry spirits).

It is not easy or comfortable to talk openly about suicide.  Even though we are supposed to be so enlightened these days about so many topics....suicide isn't one of them.  Just the other day, I heard about another young man overdosing in a neighboring community and dying as a result.  Word on the street is that his mother "hopes" his friends who did drugs with him will learn their lesson(s) as a result of their friend's unexpected death.  Well...not really.  If nobody talks about what happened and why it happened and how this particular young man could be so blind to his own high-risk behaviors...then nothing will be realized. That's just the way it is.  After all, suicide can occur by inches as well.  If we have difficulty paying attention to the day-to-day details of our own self-destructive choices in the general sense, let alone the details associated with what we are drinking, smoking, snorting, injecting, and/or swallowing within any given 24 hour period....what's there to be shocked about when "it" actually happens...and we die by "accident"?

I have often been asked "How can you tell if someone is serious about committing suicide or not?"  The truth is, we can't.  We have to take all verbal and/or written threats seriously in the present moment.  After the threat is communicated, you would want to know how the person plans to carry out his or her threat.  Some people have a plan as to how they would do it, others do not.  When there is a plan...and the person involved has the means to carry out his or her plan, it is time to call 911 immediately and/or to take that person to the nearest hospital emergency room.  There are no other options.

What about the person who may often threaten to commit suicide or tells you they want to die and can't stand being here more than three, five, or ten times in the past six months?  I know.  It can be very frustrating like the story of the boy who cried "Wolf!".  Yet anyone who can actually say out loud to someone else "I want to die.." or "I can't stand living anymore.." or "I think about suicide all the time.." ---you realize they really do have a mental health problem, correct?  Let's face it, nobody in their right mind would say they want to die unless they have issues with their mind being not quite "right".  Depression is the obvious cause of such proclamations...but then so is untreated mania...or a pre-existing personality disorder that the individual has no clue how to effectively manage....or brain damage to the pre-frontal cortex...or the use and abuse of alcohol and/or drugs.... or all of the above.  As there are many factors that can contribute to a person's thinking about suicide, talking about it to someone else, developing a plan, and/or acting on that plan either successfully or unsuccessfully---we can't just blow it off as another attempt at getting attention.

In the final analysis, we all need to realize that the mention of suicidal thoughts, plans, and/or actual attempts at self-harm requires immediate professional help and intervention.  It's that simple.  We don't ignore it and we don't minimize it because "She talks about it all the time and wouldn't ever do it really.."  There are millions of cases to date where "He really didn't mean to kill himself...it was just an accident."  No, it wasn't. It's just that we feel better for putting it that way.

Until next time....

If you or someone you care about needs to speak to someone immediately about a desire to die, please contact 1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Hotline).  In Michigan, residents may also call 1-800-231-1127 (Common Ground). 

The Last Five Species of ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts!)

Last time, I posted about the first four species of automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) that can run and ruin our relationships with others.  Here are the remaining five species to become aware of when examining your own stinkin' thinkin':

5.  "I Feel Therefore I Think" Thinking (When physical feelings and/or emotions sabotage objective thinking.)

Feelings are fleeting.  This is the first noble truth.  No feeling is going to come and stay with you forever.  All feelings, be them physical feelings or emotions-based feelings, will eventually pass.  Having shared this, how is it we get into the bad habit of believing that our feelings dictate the facts of any given circumstance or situation we find ourselves in?  Feelings are NOT facts generally speaking.  Remember, they come...and they go.  The facts don't come and go.  Facts stick around no matter what else is going on around us...and will continue to stick around no matter how much we may try to ignore them.

People who struggle with this particular species of ANTs have somehow confused feelings that come and go with facts that never leave.  This is especially true for those who struggle with anxiety.  Beyond the obvious to do with changes in one's physical sensations ("Oh, my stomach hurts, I HAVE CANCER!"), many of us aren't even in the present moment when we react or respond to something we are asked or are involved in.

Just the other day I was at the library and the clerk behind the desk was rambling on to a patron about the library's fax machine. When I walked up, I heard the clerk say "Well, you can go to the reference librarian right over there (as she pointed to her) and she can help you."  Great, right?  Well, not really.  At this point, the clerk started talking about the fax machine AGAIN and how it works to this patron for ????? purpose?  By the time the patron was able to escape, I walked up and said to the clerk, "You know, you probably would have been better off just letting the patron go over to the reference librarian when you told her she could help her with that fax." The clerk looked at me and said, "Well, sometimes the reference librarian is busy."  I said, "Is she busy now?" (Obviously not as the reference librarian was looking in our direction for the past 5 minutes and was doing nothing with nobody!)  Then I said, "Well, when there's a line, that's your signal to basically wrap it up and wait on the next person."  This clerk looked me in the eye and actually said to me, "What line?!"  I said, "I'm the line!"  (DOH!!!!)  See what I mean?  Because the clerk was somewhere else in her head thinking about God knows what outside of right now and real life reality....this is how crap like this occurs!  "I Feel Therefore I Think!"  Whatever she was doing up in her head, she was clearly not paying attention to the reality going on in the library around here the moment I showed up!   ;-)  Focusing on the facts versus focusing on one's feelings isn't as easy as it may appear reading about it here and now.  Lots of people talk and respond to things that have nothing to do with "right now and real life reality";  they are responding to something else from somewhere else be it from their past---or their future catastrophic fictional account of reality (anticipatory anxiety about the future).  In the end, one has to practice living in the present moments of their life without going back and forth mentally to anywhere BUT real life and right now reality when interacting with others.  A stomach ache doesn't mean you have cancer...and a line CAN mean one person not fifty!

6.  "Negative Nellie" Thinking

This particular ANT species speaks for itself.  Negative Nellie thinking is NOT a preventative which ensures that any bad things which happen to us will "pinch" less when they occur.  Nor is Negative Nellie thinking a way to prevent the bad things in life from happening in the first place.  Yes, I have heard "Well, if I think the worst is going to happen and it doesn't, then I will feel good!"  That's kind of like saying, "Well, if I walk into the ocean with weights on my ankles and I don't drown, then I had me a good day!"  When we let our negative-nellie-isms take up space in our minds and hearts---we instead repeatedly traumatize ourselves with our own dreadful thoughts and feelings associated with those thoughts!  This is like playing with knives every day and then believing if one of the knives actually cuts you, it won't hurt as much!  Or even worse, that if you stopped playing with knives every day, then a knife will SURELY cut you because you stopped playing with knives every day!  Yikes!

7.  "You Can Read My Mind...and Vice Versa" Thinking (Fortune telling)

This mind-reading thing keeps us under-responsible about communicating effectively with one another.  It is easy to get lazy about our own communication process and style.  There are always certain things we don't want to talk about as much as we do other, more pleasant topics.  Time to put on our big girl and big boy pants and get over ourselves in this regard.  We don't just get to talk about stuff we want to talk about; many times, we need to talk about "difficult" or "boring" or "uninteresting" subjects in order to authentically understand and be understood by one another.  Oh...and do this every single day if we are "together" as a couple ...or a parent...or a best friend...  This mind-reading thing prevents any of that from happening (to authentically understand someone else and to be authentically understood by someone else). Instead, we guzzle the Kool-Aid concerning what we "already know" about the other person and why they say and do the things they say and do.  Unless the person is an addict (and everything they say and do is in order to get their "fix")...there is no mind-reading thing that is going to work between two people, period.  So stop it.  It's a very bad habit.

8.  "I Can See the Future" Thinking (Prophecy)

Prophecy isn't new.  Remember Edgar Cayce?  Or Jeanne Nixon?  These were so-called "prophets" of the bygone era who used to come out with "Predictions for 19XX" in the National Enquirer every Christmas.  Of course, 99.999% of these predictions were wrong year in and year out.  Grant it, some predictions are more obviously accurate than others:  if you drink five glasses of wine tonight, the chances are very great that you WILL get schwasted.  But that's more a cause and effect kind of thinking at work rather than this "I Can See the Future" thinking referred to here.

When we engage in this type of ant species thinking...we believe we have control over outcomes we have no real control over.  Period.  If ever there was an exercise in futility, this is it.  I can't control the future just because I claim that I see this or that coming on down the pike.  And neither can you.  We can plan for our own future in an appropriate way and we can "work the plan" in order to make it an eventual reality...but that's the most and best we can do.  We cannot really see into the future...or predict it.  Nobody can.  We can only do our part to make good and right decisions, in a timely manner, each and every day.  And these decisions, when they are genuinely good for us, will help us move from where we are right now...to where we want to be in our life down the road...

Today Tori Spelling was on the tube talking about some psychic network and how she needs it to feel good about herself and her future for only 75 cents a minute.  Therapy is a much better buy I'm just sayin'.

9.  "I Have to Label Everything" Thinking

Labeling is basically prejudice in a more upmarket suit of clothes.  Nobody likes being called prejudiced, but we all are to some degree and extent.  Labeling is just a fancier way of putting it.  If I don't understand "it" or if "it" isn't enough like I am...labeling "it" makes me feel like I have to advantage over "it" and "it" can't hurt me or surprise me in some negative way.  Okay.  That's how the logic generally flows.

Labels prevent us from truly understanding what is before us...what is before us may be a person, or an unfamiliar situation...or a given circumstance or situation we are going through.  If we label it, then we feel we have a sense of power over it.  Which we don't, but we still want to believe that anyway.  Being open to finding out more about a thing or a person or a place or a circumstance is a good practice to stomp out this particular species of ANT.

Probably the funniest (recent) case of labeling was as I was watching an episode of "Southern Charm" (don't ask!).  As "Kathryn" was having lunch with "Cooper", he mentions her Birkin bag (purse) as she sits down to join him at the table.  She makes a comment how she got it for herself because she deserved it...and then you hear her say (to the audience) that the bag is a fake because these bi**ches are like that.  That's labeling...two-way labeling as a matter of fact.  To be impressed...and to impress.  Sad.  Which reminds me to find that Celine I was planning to take out of hibernation now that it's SPRING!

Until next time...

;-)

The First Four Species of ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts!)

Refer to my last post to get caught up regarding our Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) and how to start stomping them out (of your mind) by type of species...

The first species of ANTs is "Always or Never" Thinking.

Often referred to also as Black/White Thinking, this particular species of ANT (automatic negative thoughts) focuses in on our personal prejudices across all areas of our own functioning. And I don't just mean negative prejudices when I say that;  we can just as easily be prejudiced towards some place, some thing, or some person in a false positive way also.  One author I especially admire put the reasons why we are prejudiced to begin with very eloquently;  she said it has everything to do with "superiority".  She's right.  When we believe something or someone is "all good"...we believe it---or them---or we---are "superior".  And when we believe something or someone is "all bad"....we believe it---or them---or him or her----are "inferior".  If you prefer to frame this as George Carlin the late comedian once did, he said:  "How come everyone who drives faster than me is a maniac...but everyone who drives slower than me is a moron?"  This is what Always or Never and Black/White thinking is like.  We are at the center of our own universe;  whatever we want and get or like or have is "superior" and ALWAYS positive.  Anything else is basically dog doo on the bottom of our shoe.  This is a tough way to live because it makes us close minded, unwilling to receive new information and process it appropriately, and unable to see the shades of gray that exist in all things and all people between that black and white (and always/never) continuum...

The second species of ANTs is "I Beat Myself Up With Guilt" Thinking.

Put another way, this is the "I feel I SHOULD have..." whatever whatever line of thinking.  Listen, there is a difference between legit guilt and toxic guilt.  I've blogged about this before.  Healthy guilt is a signal to yourself that what you are saying or doing is absolutely wrong as in sinful, immoral, illegal, self-serving, and/or manipulative.  That's one thing.  At least with that you can do something about it to make the situation right again..such as the three "R"s (Recognize, Repent, and Repair the damage you have caused!).

Toxic guilt, on the other hand, is a way to excuse yourself from living in the present moments of your life.  If something needs to be faced and managed appropriately, there's nothing like toxic guilt to keep you from doing your own work.  Kind of like that paralysis of analysis except toxic guilt is what we're using instead of the analysis part.  By being and feeling "guilty" so much of the time...what else is there to do or think about? It can become a very comfortable place to live in mentally and psychologically speaking.  Toxic guilt relative to present-day circumstances often has to do with being over-responsible for someone else's issues or problems that do not legitimately belong to you.  I had a mom tell me the other day that her son blamed her for his heroin addiction.  He "expected" more from her and his dad when he graduated from high school and when he didn't get it...he said not being "set up" was why he began to dabble in heroin.  I responded by saying that was the first case I ever knew of whereby a heroin addict figured that his own narcissism was the reason why he started using!  But for her, she was tormented believing (the lie!) that not setting him up after high school in the way that he wanted may have truly causes his heroin use.  NOT!

The third species of ANTs is "It's Your Fault!" Thinking.

We all have issues with blaming other people for our own problems.  It's pretty much human nature.  Look at Adam and Eve.  When confronted by God, Adam blamed Eve...and Eve blamed the serpent.  I can assure you neither of them went to school to learn what "blame" was and how to practice it successfully in life.  This "It's Your Fault!"thinking is what allows us to avoid personal responsibility for our own stuff...whatever that stuff may be.  It's your fault I'm fat because you want to eat at Big Boy whenever we go out.  It's your fault I'm ugly because you didn't pay for my plastic surgery.  It's your fault I'm stupid because you are stupid and I'm your kid.  I hope you are catching my drift here.  This species of ANTs is especially destructive because it is so easy to stay oblivious to this own bad habit in our thinking process and patterns.  So pay attention. Are you a serial blamer?  If so, time to STOP and then THINK before you go on and start blaming something or someone else for your own unmet expectations.  You don't want to be one of those people who has to carry around your own body chalk because your "victim" status is such a huge part of your life!

The fourth species of ANTs is "This is Happening to ME!" Thinking.

When we take any random life experience too personally, we start to engage in what is called "ideas of reference" thinking.  This is not a good thing.  People who are chronically and persistently mentally ill often have this issue;  no matter what happens or what is said---there is some underlying meaning that relates to the receiver of that message and ONLY the receiver of that message.  Someone looks at you sideways in a store because their eyes are itching them...and you take it as a personal threat.  Someone coughs as you approach them at a meeting, and you take that to mean they are sick and now you're going to get sick as well.  It sounds funny perhaps reading this here...but you would be amazed at how many of us struggle with this particular species of ANTs!  Listen, many things occur in our presence just because they do.  It doesn't mean that you need to read between the lines or get your undies in a twist.  If someone says or does anything you are unsure about or feel offended by, all you need do is ask:  "What did you mean by that?"  That's all.

Next time, I will present the remaining species of ANTs that can plague us and cause a whole lot of unnecessary drama in the way we think---and stink when we think!