Copyright 2009 © by Susan Carrell

All rights reserved

From Susan@CarrellCounseling.com

August 2009

Closely related to lay-a-way, a purchase plan in which an item is paid for over time and is not in your possession immediately, women who shop understand hide-a-way, a similar plan in which a newly purchased item is out of sight.

I was in a check-out lane at a local Target the other day and encountered a sister-in-crime behind the counter.  The prim white haired clerk commented on my purchase: 

“I love this pitcher!  Are you going to use it or just look at it?”

“Just look at it,” I answered.  “It’s for the top of my kitchen cabinets.  Only it has to go into hide-a-way for a while.”

With a knowing look and a twinkle the pert clerk responded, “I always preferred the trunk of my car for hide-a-way but my husband caught on through the years.  Now I stash merchandise at my daughter’s.  Where will you put this?”

“Right now I’m thinking the trunk of the car sounds like a terrific idea.  It would be a safe option.  Thanks for the tip!”

We smiled intimately into each others faces like old school chums and I went on my way, leaving my new girlfriend to counsel other customers.

Securing the Contraband is Step One in the hide-a-way process.  You must locate the forbidden though irresistible object and feel the adrenalin rush as you consider ownership.  Step Two is Hiding the Loot, a time of scheming and planning that most adults are equipped for thanks to the childhood game when hiding places have ultimate value.  Having determined the trunk of my car would do nicely, I mused on Step Three, Show and Tell, the moment of full disclosure.  When would it be safe to pull my prize pitcher out of hiding?  Timing is everything.  One must consider the mood factor (your partner’s) and await a good one.  Also of crucial consideration is the length of time from purchase to pull-out—too soon and you risk explosion (your partner’s), too long and you loose the competitive edge (yours) and the thrill is gone.  I thought I could bring this particular acquisition forth in less than a month; not too bad.  On to contemplation of Step Four, Shock and Disbelief.  Shock and Disbelief (yours) is called for when your partner doesn’t remember “that old thing”. 

What makes women hide new purchases from their partners?  That’s easy, it’s guilt.  Guilt is that awful feeling you get when you do something you think you shouldn’t, or you don’t do something you think you should.  Unplanned purchases qualify in the “things you shouldn’t” category.  Clothes, shoes, purses, jewelry, and do-dad’s like my pitcher are the big offenders.  But what’s a girl to do when it’s the perfect thing and maybe even on sale?  But I digress… Back to guilt…

The guilt of buying something when you think you shouldn’t is not a sign that toxic guilt, the pervasive guilt that destroys good mental health, has a hold on you.  On the contrary, this is an example of good guilt, the kind that can help you make good choices.      

The guilt that motivates hide-a-way behavior is minor in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a great way to understand the power of the emotion up close and personal.  It turns perfectly good, honest, upright women like you and me into petty criminals.  We plot, scheme, and lie with malice of forethought.  We trick our partners and then challenge their mental capability if questioned—you don’t remember this?  We even deceive ourselves into assuming innocence if the treasure is buried long enough.

Being transparent and taking responsibility for our actions is the mature solution to hide-a-way behavior.  Letting guilt inform us instead of ignoring the wormy feeling and standing in the check-out line anyway is the answer.  So will we resolve to put the dishonest behavior behind us?  Probably not.  Why?  Because walking on the wild side to get what we want now and again is just too much fun.  We’ll feel the guilt and do it anyway.    

Copyright 2009 © by Susan Carrell

All rights reserved

May 2009

Hairdresser/Housekeeper Guilt

My adult daughter thought it would be fun to celebrate Mother’s Day by shopping, having lunch, and having our hair done together by her stylist at the salon she has frequented for several years. 

When she first proposed the plan I was delighted.  What mother wouldn’t be?  A whole day with one’s daughter doing fun girlie things would tickle any mother’s fancy.  However, the initial glee was soon followed by a surge of guilt; oh no, I would have to cheat on my stylist! 

This is not unfamiliar territory for me although not all women struggle with hairdresser guilt.  If you’re one of them, you’ve probably had the same angst with your housekeepers as well; they tend to go together.  People with this particular form of guilt suffer mightily at the thought of changing hairdressers or firing a housekeeper.

The only way I have changed hairdressers or housekeepers in my life was either they moved out of town, or I did.  Luckily, the population in the U.S. is transitory.  If the ordinary comings and goings weren’t typical in our culture, I’d still be employing one of the many difficult, though entertaining, men or women who have cut my hair or vacuumed my carpets.

My hairdressers, both gay and straight, have tended to have serious relationship problems.  I’ve only had one who was rather normally married.  The rest have been single and have bounced in and out of problematic love affairs.  I suffered right along with them.  My all-time favorite stylist hooked up with this guy who didn’t know what he wanted.  Well, maybe he did.  No commitment was his true cup of tea.  But my poor hairdresser never knew which way to jump.  Trapped in my black cape while the color “processed” I witnessed many of the lunches and flowers he sent to her shop regularly over the years.  Those displays of affection were usually followed by some blow-up that I would hear about at the next appointment. 

I loved all my stylists.  They became part of my life.  I was their mother/sister/girlfriend/therapist.  I could never leave them; what would they do without me?

The same has been true for housekeepers.  My housekeeper-history is marked with a notable sameness.  I became so enamored of the various women who cleaned my house that their comfort and satisfaction in my home grew to be more important than the work they did for me. 

I should have let Ophelia go simply because she was so weird.  She rode the bus and carried two or three large bags of who-knows-what in and out of our house.  She made bath-tub gin in her home and sold it to the neighbors.  She called my children by names she made up for them, and talked to herself constantly as she worked.  How could I fire such a colorful character?  Anyway, she needed the money, so she needed me.  Tina, quite married, was having an affair with a local businessman who picked her at my house after work for rendezvous.  The stories of their sex life were much more entertaining than the soaps I had been watching before she came to work for me.  She seldom brought lunch with her so, of course, I started making her lunch every week.  The stories and lunches became longer and more elaborate as time went by.  Did I mention she was a lousy housekeeper?  But I couldn’t fire Tina; she was part of the family.  Mary’s dysfunctional family was enough to keep me in the therapy business for years.  Unfortunately, I paid her for the therapy I gave instead of the other way around.  When she broke her arm, what was I supposed to do?  She needed the work and she needed me.

I envied friends who had no such feelings about their hairdresser or housekeeper.  They changed hairdressers and fired housekeepers willy-nilly.  I’ll confess to being critical of them, my friends, not the hairdressers or housekeepers.  I only criticized them in my mind because after all they were my friends.  But I’d think of them as selfish, fickle, spoiled and disloyal.  How would they like to be treated like that?  But secretly, I was jealous of their freedom.  They saw someone whose hair they admired and they’d make an appointment with that woman’s stylist the next day.  Their housekeeper missed vacuuming the carpet in the closet and that was the end of that.  Yes indeed, I envied that freedom.

So what’s my strategy?  Clearly, I haven’t made a ton of progress in this category yet because of my knee-jerk guilt when my daughter invited me to cheat on my hairdresser.  However, I did cheat on my hairdresser and my daughter and I had so much fun that we made another joint appointment with her stylist; we plan to make our beauty shop appointments regular mother/daughter events.  I’m sure my now former hairdresser (whom I like very much) won’t go broke or have a broken heart because she’s loosing me as a client and I’ll be getting something very important—time with my daughter. 

As for the housekeeper part, I think it’s just easier for me to do it myself.  Not kidding.

It’s all about balance in the end.  There is something to be said for loyalty and compassion and there is something to be said for getting your money’s worth and getting your needs met.

I feel guilty because I didn’t put this in my book as one of the common guilt-inducing situations.  Oh well, I couldn’t put in everything that makes me feel guilty—too much to choose from.

“Go to www.youtube and put ‘Susan Boyle’ in the search box”.

I did.  For the next few minutes I watched and listened and wept.  Matt and I celebrated the magic.

I seldom watch a movie more than once and I don’t read the same book twice, but I’ve played and re-played the clip of Susan Boyle on youtube.  I find myself leaving my household chores to play it again and pulling it up on the computer when I should be working.  I’m trying to figure out why.

Her remarkable performance is the obvious reason.  But there’s so much more to it:   The contrast of her ordinariness to the sparkle and stardom of the judges, her unexpected wit and sense of humor in the face of sarcasm and doubt, the transformation of her physical appearance and demeanor when she sang,  and her surprising talent.  When I watched it for the first time all of these conflicting images and messages unfolded in seconds across the landscape of my prejudice and preconception.  I had just enough time to feel myself squirm, gearing up to be embarrassed for her before she sang.   And then, the magic.

The fairytale quality of the clip is irresistible.  Cinderella has nothing on this unemployed 47 year old woman from Scotland who lives with her parents and her cat.  She’s been singing since she was 12, she said, and has dreamed of being a ”professional singer”.  Well, she will be now.

But I think the quality that captivates me most is her quiet confidence.  She has the rare quality of being comfortable in her own shoes–or so it seems.  I always loved a line from the movie “Moonstruck” (which I have seen more than once) when in response to a tempting invitation of infidelity, the matriarch of the family refuses “…because I know who I am”.  Susan Boyle knows who she is.

As a mental health professional for over 30 years, I have worked with countless people who sought my services because they wanted to feel more secure, more confident.  Many, many people feel something is wrong with them because they lack self-confidence (also known as self-esteem).  I tell them not to worry, everybody is looking for it.   Susan Boyle seems to have it.  I hope she does.  It’s certainly a part of her magic.

Copyright 2009 © by Susan Carrell

All rights reserved

From Susan@CarrellCounseling.com

April 2009

Today I was channel surfing and landed on a program called “Tattoo Hunter” on the Discovery Channel.  The host’s name is Lars Krutak.  Lars and his crew identify primitive tribes around the world that perform tattooing.  They attempt to befriend the natives, hoping to experience their tattooing practices.  This time they were in Mozambique to learn about the ancient, forbidden practice of tattooing which is a rite of passage signaling a boys transition from childhood to maturity.

A message to parents appeared on the screen after every commercial break warning that children might become upset by viewing the program.  No kidding!  I was unable to watch the entire show myself.  The camera close-ups of primitive knives piercing the flesh of thirteen year old boys as they grimaced or cried out in pain was too much for me.  I found smearing the dark colored gook—ground up leaves or a mixture of ashes, I’m not sure—into the fresh wounds equally disconcerting.

The procedure used by natives in Mozambique was a far cry from the (hopefully) sterilized electric needles used in the West to create body art.  I couldn’t help but think of the practitioners and clients at the beauty shop that I go to.  There’s a tattoo parlor in the back and most of the hair stylists, including mine, are bedecked with body art from stem to stern.  One never knows if the clients waiting in the reception area are there for a new tattoo or a hair cut.  But I digress.

The Tattoo Hunter program made me think about a much more serious phenomenon than tattooing that is alive and well in our own country.  Cutting, also called self-mutilation, has long been with us, but today it’s become all too commonplace, especially among young people.  I’ll explain.

Some people have a very difficult time regulating their emotions.  Mental health professionals refer to this as “emotional dysregulation”.  While emotionally healthy individuals are able to manage difficult emotions such as anger, disappointment, humiliation and guilt, people with emotional dysregulation can not.  Their response to these feelings knows no bounds.  That is, when they experience anger, it feels like rage.  Disappointment may lead to feelings that life is not worth living.  Humiliation may make them feel completely worthless.  Guilt can plunge them into the abyss of depression. 

You have probably known people like this.  If you hurt their feelings, even unintentionally, their reaction is extreme.  You are the evil one and forgiveness does not come easily.  The slightest misstep on your part causes them to go ballistic.  Therefore, you walk on eggshells when you are around them.

When emotional distress becomes intolerable, some people with emotional dysregulation find that inflicting pain on their body by cutting—with a razor, knife, pen, pencil, paperclip, etc.—alleviates the psychic pain.  It is a strange but, for some people, an effective way to feel better, at least for the moment.

Adolescence is a tumultuous time at best.  In general, young people are more vulnerable to fluctuating and extreme emotions than adults.  Of course, most adolescents and young adults do not cut.  But when I googled “cutting yourself”, I got 67,900,000 hits.  Here are some of the posts I found:

I have done it, although not to any extreme degree, and not so that anyone at all noticed. At the time…I was in great emotional pain over a guy, and somehow felt that to physically hurt myself gave me a reason to feel so bad.  Sort of bringing the physical and the mental into equilibrium, so to speak.

I’m 12 years old I’v been cutting for 2 years. I just stoped about a month ago. No I didn’t do it for attetion. I was going through alot of stuff . It was really hard time . So I found cutting my wrists ,legs,hips,and my stomach as a relif . It really helped alot. I was hospitlised for a few days because i had cut really bad at one of my low points. So ANYONE who cuts please try and stop, becuase once you start you really never stop.

I did it in high school. For me it was a control thing. It made me feel powerful and in control when the rest of my life seemed too crazy. It was certainly not for attention since no else knew. When I tried to stop I found it very hard. I did a paper about it later in college and found that some researches say that the chemicals released in the brain when cutting are very powerful and can be addictive for some people. That’s why it can be so hard to stop. It’s not impossible though. I haven’t done it in years and I never get the urge to anymore.

The sad thing is that these young people seemed so alone in their distress.  Parents and other adults—teachers, coaches, aunts, uncles, grandparents, pastors—need to look for signs of distress in young people who may not be able to reach out for help and respond with interest and compassion.

Look for signs of cutting if you know a young person who seems to struggle with his feelings and appears depressed, anxious, or just generally unhappy.  Be suspicious if she hides parts of her body that would usually be visible such as wearing long sleeves in warm weather.  Don’t be afraid to take her aside, ask questions, and express concern.

Cutting may be a rite of passage for adolescent boys in certain tribes in Mozambique, but cutting in the United States is a serious sign of emotional distress that deserves the care and attention of responsible adults.

“Just talk about what’s on your mind” one said.  Scary.  Well, OK.

I went to church last Sunday (Palm Sunday) and heard a stellar sermon on “The Unexpected”–like what happens when you get something you didn’t expect?

Take the economy for instance.  Who expected that?  I sure didn’t expect to still have my house for sale nine months after putting it on the market…but I do.  This has put us under the dark pale of financial angst since we’re closing in on completing our new house without the expected cash to plunk down on our new mortgage.  But then I COULD feel  guilty about complaining when fellow citizens have lost their houses AND their jobs.  But feeling guilty simply isn’t helpful.  I’ll feel compassion instead, and some degree of peace knowing that we are employing construction workers who wouldn’t have work otherwise.

STRATEGIES for LIVING WELL

Copyright 2009 © by Susan Carrell

All rights reserved

From Susan@CarrellCounseling.com

March 2009

Spotting

Today at the fitness center I was doing deep knee lunges.  I know to “spot”, that is, focus on something just ahead of me as I make my way across the floor lunge by lunge.  It is not much different than looking ahead as you move up an icy staircase so you won’t fall.  Spotting makes all the difference.  If I don’t remember to look just ahead at a fixed point as I’m doing lunges I’ll lose my balance every time.

Today as I was spotting and lunging I thought about how spotting applies to spirituality.  I lose my balance if I don’t focus on my spiritual side as I move through life.

I think of spirituality as a connection with the ethereal and eternal, a bond with a benevolent force that is powerfully good, a relationship with mystery and with knowing what cannot be known, a link to something that brings us to our best selves, and the presence of a still small voice that reassures us all will be well.

I moved to Colorado from Missouri eight months ago and semi-retired from the work and religion I had practiced in the past.  I have not worked or attended church for eight months.  Actually, it’s been more of a sabbatical from both endeavors, time off to reinvent my life.  But I have to keep spotting—finding a focus just ahead as I move forward—or I’ll certainly fall on my face.

Writing is the focus that brings balance to my career but finding the right focus for maintaining my spiritual connection has been more fluid.  Like moving across the floor doing lunges, the focus has to change if my spiritual life is to flourish.

Living close to the Rocky Mountains has given me one focus.  We hike often and it seems each trek is more beautiful than the last.  We are witnesses to the soaring rock walls and panoramic vistas that define the mountains.  When we aren’t hiking in the mountains, we’re looking at them.  Every evening we stop what we’re doing at sunset to gaze at the purple mountain’s majesty.  In these surroundings it is not hard to remember that God Is.

Ella, my two-year-old grandbaby, has become another spiritual focus for me.  Sometimes I just sit and watch her play.  She has taught me a lot about what is really important.  There have been moments that I have been so awestruck with a sense of joy and aliveness that it takes my breath away.  One such moment was when my daughter, Ella’s mother, the baby’s teenage step sisters, and I were teaching her to do a somersault on the living room floor.  We were all absorbed in the mutual task.  Ella’s effort to push her bottom over her head and her antics in the process made us all laugh to the point of tears.  Nothing else mattered; the whole world was reduced to the five of us, fellow travelers on a mysterious journey, united as one in this moment and celebrating just being.  A spiritual experience for sure.

A third focus that promotes spiritual balance for me is reading.  There’s something about finding a book that affirms deeply held convictions that you somehow know but might never pull to consciousness yourself.  Recently I read Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth which was like that for me.  I continue to be comforted by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat’s Spiritual Literacy which I am still reading.  As the book’s cover explains, “Using more than 650 brief examples from contemporary books and movies, they tutor us in the art of lingering with our experiences and seeing the world with fresh eyes.”  I find this to be true as I creep through the text slowly, savoring one or two entries a night.

Not long ago I attended a worship service and found yet another focus which proved helpful in steadying my spiritual journey.  My hiatus from organized religion came partly because I haven’t had the energy to integrate myself into a new faith community and partly because of some need to step back from anything scheduled for a while.  But last week was Ash Wednesday and I felt compelled to attend my favorite service in the church year.  I chose a church in a neighboring community because the website announced the service would be held in the chapel.  I assumed the gathering would be small, which appealed to me.  The chapel doors were wide open that day and the sunlight and warm breeze fell on the few souls gathered like the breath of God.  The musty smell of well-worn prayer books and the scrape of kneelers against the slate floor as we rose and knelt were anchors to my soul.  I didn’t know anyone there who, like me, was present to acknowledge the beginning of the season of Lent, but I felt I was amongst family.  When the priest smeared ashes on our foreheads in the shape of a cross and reminded us that “from dust we came and from dust we would return”, I thought of the impermanence of life and remembered that all human-kind are indeed family.

My strategy for living well this month is to find “spots” upon which  you can focus so you don’t lose your spiritual balance as you move through life.  I invite you to try some that work for me:  Stay as close to nature as you can, find the company of babies and young children, search out books that speak to your soul, and consider the role of organized religion in your life.

I’ll start with whatever captures my attention, concern and imagination with the hope that your response will guide further exploration of the subject.  Since I’ve been a mental health professional and spiritual seeker most of my life, I tend to gravitate to matters of the psyche, the interior life , and all things relevant to relationships.  If you follow this blog I trust you are interested in the same.

I’m eager to hear from you and become your partner in the blogging community.  This should be fun!

I hate to clean up after myself when I go out to eat. I do it though. Like a little robot, I join all the others tidying up our places after paying a hefty price to eat out. I think the reason we all fall into line is because of guilt. We’d feel we’d done something wrong if we didn’t bus our own tables.  We’d feel we were bad for breaking some cosmic rule.

I used to think it was a way to keep prices down. Now I think the idea was planted in my head as part of some corporate brainwashing scheme.

One of the main reasons I go out is so I won’t have to clean up. Then there I am, carefully stacking plastic, folding and stuffing paper into my empty cup, and wiping a blob of catsup off the table.

What I really hate are places that give you real dishes (no, I don’t hate real dishes) and then expect you to sort silverware into one bin, dishes into another, and poke your trash in the black hole.

Suddenly I’m back in summer camp where we were required a similar sorting process, or at any of the many hospital cafeterias I frequented when I worked as a nurse. I don’t want to be reminded of all that when I’m dining out.

Sometimes, when my coping quotient is low, I walk out without bussing my table. I learned not to glance back. When I have, I’ve caught scowls and smirks on the faces of fellow robots. The same looks you might see if you used your desert fork to spear your steak at a formal dinner. It’s become a certain etiquette—fast food etiquette, I guess. Those looks used to blow me into guilt-orbit but since I read the book I wrote on Escaping Toxic Guilt, I can exit an eatery with trash on my table proudly.

I don’t like this cultural norm and wish things would change. Do you agree? Can we start a movement? Isn’t that what blogs are for?