Archive for May, 2009
Wipe That Smile Off Your Face!
“You may not smile in Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada, or Virginia.” At least, not if you are getting your driver’s license photo taken.
Apparently, they use photo detection software to compare faces for identity fraud purposes. And smiling thwarts the computer.
Is it even legal (or constitutional) to require drivers to not smile? Can they frown? Stick out their tongues? Look cross-eyed? (Interesting face research where you can combine 2 faces; and a blog on pics of faces in places; and make your own Flash face like Mr Potato Head).
I supposed DMV would prefer folks who are depressed when they get their photo taken, to keep the computers happy. One man’s downer is another machine’s Prozac.
Just bizarre.
Posted in Shoveling Up the Mess
This went out on a mass email. I liked it and I decided that since the author wants it disseminated, he wouldn’t mind being made a Guest Blogger:
According to a report CASA issued this morning, federal, state and local governments spend almost half a trillion dollars every year — almost 11 percent of their total budgets — as a result of alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse and addiction. The worst part is that, for federal and state spending, about 95% of that money is spent “Shoveling Up” the mess created by a failure to provide enough money for prevention and treatment.
- See detailed expenses for Massachusetts and download the report.
- Send a message to your governor and state legislators urging them to review and act on the report.
President and CEO
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University
Holland Refuses To Approve Seroquel For Depression
According to Reuters, the Netherlands Health Authority, acting as a reference body for the European Union, shot down AstraZeneca’s application to have Seroquel approved as a treatment for depression.
“The Dutch decision to refuse approval for the medicine in MDD, because of a negative benefit-to-risk balance, comes after Seroquel XR won partial support from U.S. advisers as a treatment for the same condition last month.”
AstraZeneca has submitted its application to the European Medicines Agency. The drug was reportedly approved for depression in Canada last month (news to me).
Summer Fundraiser, Criticized For Asking
Another $385 came in yesterday from nine people, bringing the total raised so far to $1,510 from 37 people. That leaves $2,490 from 63 people to go to reach the overall goals of $4,000 from 100 people somewhere around June 5, next Friday.
Thanks to all of you who’ve contributed so far.
I have two substantial concerns right now: 1) I fear the fundraiser won’t meet its goals or even come close and 2) I’ve been roundly attacked in a few comments (which I didn’t post) and a couple of emails in the last 24 hours for even asking for contributions to support the work I do here. Of course they were all anonymous! Apparently some folks have a weird beef with me (whatever, have a nice day) or somehow don’t get that sites like this one are rapidly becoming the new media in the US. To expect them to operate for free is sheer madness (I can assure readers that I do it for a significant discount). As it stands these days, there are plenty of political blogs that solicit their readers for contributions (or they have loads of ads or funding from a political group, neither an option for FS), so what I am doing with this fundraiser isn’t so unusual and is pretty tame by the standards of your local community radio station or political blogs. One political site, truthout.org, used to send readers “Contribute or we go out of business” emails once a month. I try to limit my begging to once a quarter.
Anyway, it’s Fear #1 that I’m most concerned about at this point since this site is my only means of support currently (sadly, the freelance writing market has gone to hell over the last nine months or so). Newer readers probably don’t know this, but for the first two years of this site’s existence I subsidized things 100 percent out of my own pocket and only turned to readers for support in 2007 when several readers requested that I do so.
If you’d like to help ensure that my cats and I don’t end up on the street in the next week or so, please consider making a donation today.
As usual, the PayPal button is on the right. If you prefer snail mail, send me an email and I’ll send you a mailing address.
Thanks for your support.
Study: Lilly Marketed Zyprexa Off-Label For Bipolar Disorder
A new study is out in the journal Social Science & Medicine examining how Eli Lilly marketed Zyprexa, its controversial atypical antipsychotic, in primary care settings (meaning to non-psychiatrists). The paper’s author, a psychology prof at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota named Glen Spielmans, relied heavily upon the Zyprexa documents hosted on this site for his trail of evidence. As far as I know, his paper is the first published academic study of how Lilly marketed the drug far outside of its approved indications (schizophrenia and mania) in the first half of this decade.
Longtime readers will remember that I first wrote about Lilly’s marketing of Zyprexa for bipolar disorder type 2, for which it did not have marketing approval, and for agitation and mild depression, for which the company also had no approvals, in February 2007. I’m glad that Spielmans took up this matter and the entire history of Lilly’s PCP marketing campaign, as he adds a lot of depth and texture to the story. I also understand that attorneys for Elsevier, the journal’s publisher, lawyered the hell out of his paper, a highly unusual move in academic publishing, in order to keep from running afoul of Lilly’s legal team.
It’s an excellent paper and I encourage you to all give it a read. In addition, I appreciate the acknowledgment Spielmans gives me at the end of the paper.
My favorite part of the paper comes here:
“The relatively mild symptoms marketed by Lilly as components of ‘complicated mood’ (anxiety, irritability, disturbed sleep, and mood
swings) are ill-defined and, to some extent, are likely to be experienced by a large number of people. Labeling this constellation of ill-defined and likely common symptoms as indicative of a mental condition is suggestive of ‘disease mongering’ a term referencing the effort of pharmaceutical companies to broaden the market by convincing patients (and physicians) that a large number of people are suffering from a (usually relatively mild) illness which would benefit from pharmaceutical intervention. In trade journals, pharmaceutical industry insiders have plainly stated that expanding the market for their products via ‘condition branding’ (an industry term analogous to ‘disease mongering’) is a highly useful tool in the marketing arsenal. Indeed, the current corpus of internal documents hints that, in addition to marketing olanzapine, sales representatives were also marketing the expanded boundaries of bipolar disorder. No longer was bipolar disorder a relatively uncommon condition relegated to treatment by psychiatrists, it was to be marketed as a common illness with a broad spectrum of severity that warranted treatment in primary care. Despite an expanded treatment market, there is a paucity of controlled clinical trial data regarding the benefits and risks of treating adults with mild symptoms of bipolar disorder/complicated mood with ‘mood stabilizers’ or atypical antipsychotics such as olanzapine.”
Condition branding is such a delightful term. Too bad it creates so many artificial realities at such high costs for so many people.
Lilly should be counting its lucky stars after reading this paper because it’s clear that the company off-label marketed for bipolar disorder type 2 and for agitation and mild depression, but was only rung up by the feds and about 30 states for off-label marketing for dementia. As I’ve said before, its $1.42 billion settlement earlier this year with the feds and states allowed Lilly to get off cheaply, albeit with a criminal misdemeanor plea.
To date, Lilly has settled about $2.7 billion in claims concerning its handling of Zyprexa–and there’s likely more to go.
By the way, Zyprexa is the subject of 22,191 adverse events reports in the FDA’s adverse events database as of the end of 2008, including 3,442 reports where the outcome was death.
Bitterness, The Next New Mental Illness?
I generally consider myself unshockable when it comes to new disorders and illnesses that some psychiatrists want to include in the DSM, but a new proposal to include bitterness in the forthcoming edition of DSM-V real shakes me up. It would officially be called “post-traumatic embitterment disorder,” essentially lingering bitterness as the result of a traumatic event. And yes it’s modeled after PTSD.
I’m sorry but the American Psychiatric Association is proving itself to be far worse than a tool shed if it seriously considers this a disorder–the APA would count as an entire tool factory.
At his Psychology Today blog, Christopher Lane notes:
“[I]t feels positively insulting to have our justified anger at such incompetence [he refers to the George W. Bush presidency] discussed as a sign of mental illness, doubtless because drug companies—anxious to prod their faltering revenues—are promising relief from the disorder with pharmaceutical remedies.
“(Imagine, if you will, the inevitable ads: ‘Think it’s just bitterness from job loss, foreclosure on your home, or that nonexistent pension for which you’ve been saving all your working years? It may be “post-traumatic embitterment disorder,” a mental illness that some doctors think is due to a chemical imbalance . . .’)”
No kidding. The APA should do itself a big, big favor and put a sock in the mouths of whomever is pushing for bitterness to be counted as a mental illness. The organization has already lost a ton of credibility in recent years–not that it had lots to begin with–with social anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder type 2 and the like, and it can hardly stand to lose anymore. Or will the organization not stop until it declares normalcy a mental illness?
Beyond Meds had this to say:
“I’m sure they’d happily label all of us who have been harmed by psychiatry with this disorder as we work out our dismay after realizing we’ve been had.”
Yes, like stockbrokers they want to get us coming and going.
What You Hate Most in Others, is the Shadow Within Yourself.
The Shadow in ourselves consists of all the emotions and thoughts we repress as being socially inappropriate. Jealousy, rage, that evil twinge that relishes the thought of your boss being called on the carpet? That is shadow material. The more we repress shadow material, the more of a hold it has on us.
An example? I think this is most easily seen in homophobic people. It is said that people who are homophobic harbor homosexual feelings themselves, or fear that they do. So they erect what a Freudian would refer to as a defense mechanism called a “reaction formation” in which feelings, emotions or impulses which cause anxiety are suppressed and overcome by erecting an exaggerated spectre of the opposite tendency. If you experience homoerotic feelings which you think are unacceptable, you suppress them and loudly and longly spew homophobic diatribes as a defense. This is why you see politicians and televangelists who have spent years decrying homosexuals or prostitutes suddenly on the news confessing to the same behaviors they spent years condemning.
For a Jungian, the Shadow works in the same way. What we repress and try to deny will come back to haunt us. Jung described the Shadow as, “everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about
himself and yet is always thrusting itself upon him directly or indirectly”. Shame, sexuality, rage, fear, weakness, jealousy, hurt and resentment can be shoved down into our unconscious and become shadow material. A perfect example is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson does a beautiful job of juxtaposing the entirely proper and socially acceptable Dr. Jekyll with his darker, shadow side, Mr. Hyde. In the light of day Dr. Jekyll suppresses all of his shadow material and presents this picture perfect, socially acceptable model of behavior. But at night, when no one can see, his dark side comes to life in Mr. Hyde.
Robert Bly, the poet and author, describes our shadow material as “the long bag we drag behind us”. In Bly’s book, ”A Little Book on the Human Shadow
Let’s talk about the personal shadow first. When we were one or two years old we had what we might visualize as a 360-degree personality. Energy radiated out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche. A child running is a living globe of energy. We had a ball of energy, all right; but one day we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts of that ball. They said things like: “Can’t you be still?” Or “It isn’t nice to try and kill your brother.” Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don’t like, we, to keep our parents’ love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: “Good children don’t get angry over such little things.” So we take our anger and put it in the bag. By the time my brother and I were twelve in Madison, Minnesota we were known as “the nice Bly boys.” Our bags were already a mile long.
Facing Your Shadow
What Do You Hate?
How do we identify shadow material within ourselves? One really easy way is to look at people who we absolutely loathe. They represent something we loathe within ourselves, our shadow material. Example?
I once asked my mother what kind of people irritated her the most. Her response?
“People who just go on and on and on and never make their point. I just hate that. That just keep rattling on and on, repeating themselves over and over again without ever getting to the point. I just hate that. Why don’t they say what they mean rather than repeating themselves over and over again?”
(She continued on for another 5 minutes, but I’ll spare you. You get the point.) I’ve noticed this about myself. People who really annoy me are usually doing something I do. Sometimes I’m aware that I do it, sometimes I’m not, unless I pay attention to what I’m “hating” in otherwise. The more strongly I’m irritated by someone’s behavior, the bigger the shadow in myself.
Have you ever seen someone with road rage? Do you know who irritates them the most? You got it. People who drive like they do!
What Makes You Laugh?
Another way to identify shadow material is with humor. What do you laugh at? Sometimes we laugh from recognition. I think of comedians as modern court jesters; they tell the court what a lot of us are afraid to say and we laugh because we identify with what they are saying. This can be shadow material. I’m afraid that saying what Carlos Mencias says might be considered racist or sexist or homophobic, but when he says it I laugh. He has exposed my shadow. Andrew Dice Clay was popular several years ago for this reason.
Comedy can also expose some of our evil or wicked little desires that we stuff away from the light of day. There is a category of funny videos which often make it onto TV shows like America’s Funniest Home Videos which show people falling. People falling off of trampolines, off skate boards, crashing into things. It’s often obvious that this is a very painful experience, yet the audience laughs. A person with a lot of suppressed anger towards others may find these especially funny.
What Do You Project?
Like an emotional movie projector, “projecting” refers to a behavior in which we project our own internal beliefs, feelings or experiences onto someone else when we feel they are inappropriate. Shadow material is especially susceptible to being projected onto someone else. Look around you? Does you view everyone as a cheat? A gossip? A liar? Does everyone around you seem angry? Unhappy? Fearful? You may be seeing your own shadow projected onto others.
The Mexican culture has a wonderful saying which translates roughly into English as, “The lion believes that all are like him”. That about sums it up.
What Do You Dream?
The Shadow can also work on your dreams and your daydreams. Just like shadows of light, psychological shadows get longer as the day comes to an end and appear in full force in the middle of the night, in our dreams. The monsters in our nightmares may be our own Shadows fighting to come into the light of our awareness.
What Do You Miss?
The Shadow is not necessarily evil. It is merely repressed. Many times we feel compelled to repress good qualities as well, such as; normal instincts (sexual feelings), appropriate reactions (i.e. anger or fear), realistic insights or creative impulses. I was reading about a psychiatrist who was talking to a psychiatric patient in an ER ward one evening when a fire truck whizzed by. The patient got up and ran out of the ER. When he returned hours later, the psychiatrist learned that the patient had always wanted to ride a fire truck, saw the opportunity whizzing by, jumped on the back and road off to the fire. Now this is impulsive and a bit dangerous, but not evil. How many of us would like to ride on a fire engine? How many of us would like to be so uninhibited that we could just jump on and go for a ride? But instead we repress it for fear of being seen as “crazy” or “immature” or “irresponsible”. That childlike joie de vive often gets repressed alone with the anger, shame and jealousy. Women may suppress their masculinity, their intellect or their power. Men may suppress their femininity, their fear or their sensitivity. These parts that have been suppressed are lost to us unless we search our Shadow, find and release them.
Reclaiming Your Shadow
Humans are only complete when we embrace our darkness and our light. Our Judeo-Christian culture teaches us that darkness and light are polar opposites and that we must embrace the light and deny the dark. We are beginning to learn that denying the dark only gives it more power. Instead of us controlling it, it controls our thoughts, our obsessions, our desires, our dreams, our loves and our hatreds.
The only way to “control” the dark is to embrace it, own it and take responsibility for it. We only feel whole when we acknowledge all of our thoughts, impulses, desires, wishes and feelings. We must look into the dark to see the light.
Strategies to Help you Deal with Low Frustration Tolerance
Having “low frustration tolerance” is often a factor in creating stress and can lead to anger and rage. The good news is frustration tolerance can be increased by simply changing the way you think about things. What is low frustration tolerance and how can you work to address it?
Low frustration tolerance is just what it sounds like. You do not tolerate even the most minor frustrations well. You are easily irritated. You have a short fuse. Some people with low frustration tolerance seethe quietly, some explode verbally, and some resort to physical violence when provoked.
How can you increase your ability to deal with stressors, irritants and frustration without blowing your cool?
1. Realize It’s All in Your Head
When the irritation happens and before you lose your cool, you have a thought or harbor some belief which either lowers or increases your frustration. What are some examples? Imagine being stuck in a long bank line for 45 minutes. Most Americans would become agitated and restless. Some will blow a fuse. Yet an African might be very pleased to stand in a long line. The line and the wait time are the same. Why the difference? Because of the beliefs they hold about standing in the line.
An America may stand in the line thinking:
“This is ridiculous.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“They should have more staff to handle this.”
“It shouldn’t take this long to deposit a check.”
A student in one of my classes pointed out that in an African country where people have to walk long ways to get from place to place, waiting in a line is viewed as a good thing. They consider it an opportunity to rest.
These two different viewpoints about standing in a line for 45 minutes cause different feelings. If you believe you shouldn’t have to wait 45 minutes, you get irritated. If you believe this is a rare opportunity to rest, you feel relieved and happy.
Now consider situations which irritate or annoy you. Look at some of the thinking which may be causing you to be more irritated or frustrated that the situation warrants. Here are some examples:
- “I can’t take this.”
- “This is too much.”
- “I can’t wait that long.”
- “It shouldn’t be this way.”
- “It shouldn’t be this difficult (or complicated).”
- “I should always be happy and content.”
- “Things must go my way, and I can’t stand it when they don’t.”
- “I can’t stand being frustrated, so I must avoid it at all costs.”
- “Other people should stop doing things which annoy me.”
Why is it important to listen to what you are thinking? Because you can change what you are thinking. As the example of waiting in a line shows above, if you change your view of what is happening, you can change how you feel about it. If you can tune in to what is going on in your head you can rewrite the script. A large part of feeling frustrated comes from feeling helpless. Realizing you aren’t completely helpless decreasing the frustration.
It can also be the case that what you are thinking is incorrect. If you have inaccurate beliefs (i.e. your husband doesn’t always tune you out when you are talking) then your frustration may be unwarranted (he may actually be listening to you this time). If so, challenging the validity of the belief can challenge the frustration that results from it. The scene that used to make you blow might now have no effect at all, or it may even make you laugh.
Hint: Be on the lookout for words like “must”, “can’t”, “should”, “have to”, “always”, “never” and other inflammatory language.
| Irrational Belief | Rational Belief |
| I can’t take this. | You can take this. You will not die or go insane from standing in line or getting stuck in traffic. You can take it. But you have a choice about how you take it. You can spend the next hour having a conniption fit and raising your blood pressure several points or you can spend it listening to music, catching up on calls, or reading a book. Your choice. |
| This is too much. | Too much what? Stress? If it is too much stress, remove yourself from it and regroup before you blow your top. If it is too much inconvenience, frustration or annoyance, ask yourself, is it really too much? Let’s say you’ve been standing in line at the DMV for four hours trying to get your license. Ask yourself, is it too much of a frustration, or merely a frustration? If it really is too much, leave and come back when it is less crowded or you have more time. If it has to be renewed today, weigh the cost of getting a ticket for driving without a license. Is it still too much of a frustration? Or does the danger of a ticket outweigh it? If the benefit of driving legally outweighs the frustration required to get the license, make a decision about how to pass the time in a productive manner. If you are standing in line for concert tickets, is it too much frustration, or is it worth it to go to the concert? Realize you have choices. You don’t have to stand there, you choose to. You have something to gain from tolerating this frustration, whether it be concert tickets or a renewed license. |
| I can’t wait that long. | You can’t wait that long, or you simply don’t want to wait that long? There is a difference. If you truly cannot wait that long, leave and plan to come back when you have time to wait. If you don’t want to wait that long, make a choice. Is waiting worth it or not? |
| It shouldn’t be this way. | But it is this way. Now what? You cannot change the situation, but you can choose how you react to it. |
| It shouldn’t be this difficult (or complicated). | But it is this difficult (or complicated). Now what? Deal with the reality of the situation instead of some ideal situation that you have created in your head. Let’s say you are trying to complete your income tax return. It is difficult. It is complicated. You are not a numbers person and forms are not your forte either. You do not have the power to change the difficulty and complexity of the required procedure. Do you want to spend your time and energy ranting about it? Do you want to hire someone else to deal with it? Or do you want to do it yourself and get it over with so you can get back to doing what you enjoy? Choose how will you deal with it. |
| I should always be happy and content. | You should? Or what? Your head will explode? Where is that written? Is that true for everyone else? If not, why should it be so for you? Perhaps you would like to be happy and content all the time, but is that realistic? No. |
| Things must go my way and I can’t stand it if they don’t. | Things can’t go everyone’s way all the time. That’s simply impossible. We can’t all be first in line at the DMV. So what are you going to do when it’s not your turn for things to go your way? |
| I can’t stand being frustrated, I must avoid it all costs. | Then do so. But make a list of what you will lose out on if you do this. Then decide if it’s worth avoiding the frustration to avoid the pleasaure too. It may be. It may not be. But make a conscious choice, then take responsibility for it. I hate driving in rush hour traffic. So I choose to ride the bus to work rather than drive. It takes about 30 minutes longer each way, but I use that time to catch up on my reading and arrive at my office refreshed and calm, rather than stressed from driving down I-35 at rush hour. I am happy with that choice. However, I sometimes choose to drive in rush hour in order to be able to accomplish errands at lunch or attend a performance downtown that evening. Then the convenience of completing the errands or the pleasure of attending the performance outweigh the frustration of the traffic I have to fight my way through. Either way, I have made a conscious choice and I’m am happy with it. |
| Other people should stop doing things which annoy me. | Or what? You have no control over other people. Only yourself. You cannot control what other people do. You can only control how you react to it. Stop letting other people control your day and your emotions. |
2. Expose Yourself
Another way to increase your tolerance for frustration is to gradually expose yourself to frustrating situations. Make a list of situations in which you tend to lose your cool or overreact. Commit yourself to face at least one of these each day or each week, depending upon the severity of the frustration. If it is rush hour traffic, once per day may be too much too often. If it is waiting in line for coffee, once per morning might be tolerable. If you can stand your husband’s dirty clothes on the floor, try to go a day without picking them up, then two days, then three, etc. Try to increase your tolerance slowly.
3. Rate It
Sometimes rating the frustration puts it into context. If you are thinking, “This is terrible!” Ask yourself, “How terrible is it? As bad as a root canal? An auto accident? Being fired? Getting divorced?” On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst you can imagine, how terrible is it? Putting it next to other things you have experienced in life may cause you to realize that waiting 30 minutes for lunch during the lunch hour rush may not be the worst thing that ever happened to you.
4. Develop Skills
Developing skills for helping you handle stressful events can help you weather them with more grace. Figure out what your issues are when you get frustrated. Is it that you feel trapped? Powerless? Bored? Pressured for time? Inconvenienced? Discounted? Then figure out how to do something which eliminates that feeling.
I try to carry a book or magazine with me. Being of German descent, the idea of “wasting time” is a real frustration provoker. (I think Germans have special genes which make “waste” and “inefficiency” especially intolerable!) When I get trapped somewhere (rush hour traffic, a long line, a late appointment, etc.) I catch up on my reading. This serves two purposes: 1) the time doesn’t feel wasted, 2) it keeps me amused and out of trouble, 3) I feel I accomplished something when I finish reading a book that would otherwise have piled up on my bedstand and 4) I don’t feel so much at the mercy of life’s little calamities.
Making active choices instead of merely reacting can greatly decrease your feelings of stress and frustration and give you a better sense of control over your life. Working to increase your tolerance for frustrations which cannot be otherwise avoided will help you feel more confident and competent in your ability to handle annoyances. Both of these together can make your life more peaceful and your world a little calmer.
I’m Going to be Happy Today – Regardless!
Therapists tend to be very empathic. And this is a good thing in a therapy session. But it can really wreak havoc on our personal lives.
I love the work I do and most of the people with whom I work. But I also have a tendency to absorb other people’s emotions (something I tell clients not to do all the time – my bad). Yesterday I seemed to be entrenched in colleagues complaining about the work environment and other colleagues. They were outraged with injustices and inconsiderations by management and other staff. I was buying into this until I realized, “Wait a minute. I like that guy, and that guy, and her too. And I like where I work.”
I had to mentally extricate myself from the dialogue and realize these people and this organization aren’t bothering me. I then removed myself from the proverbial water cooler and went back to my office to regroup. I got quiet and tried to sort out how I felt about it and what I had absorbed from other people. Most of the negativity I had been feeling had been other people’s. I had to mentally ”unload” everything which I had allowed to be heaped on and get back in touch with how I felt and what I thought.
In my teens I worked in a factory with a lot of older women. They were very wise about a lot of things and I learned a lot about life from them. I remember looking up to see a cluster of heads on the opposite side of the factory. Some sage, older woman next to pointed out, “Look. They’re warming up.” And they were. A drama erupted not 30 minutes later. I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember that site, of it “warming up”. I’ve seen these in most of my jobs since then. There is usually a “cluster of complainers” who get incensed and outraged about injustices and inconsiderations by either management, fellow colleagues, customers, clients or whatever they can find. They start a rabble and get a drama going. This serves at least purposes: 1) it alleviates boredom, 2) it redirects stress or negative attention onto someone or something else. And it was working the same way yesterday at work. So what do you do?
Boundaries, boundaries. Therapists do love to talk about boundaries, don’t we? But they are so important to mental health and so poorly understood or maintained. So today I must do my own work. I have to strengthen my boundaries on these things. One way to do that is to get up and leave when the stimulating conversation we are having turns into a diatribe against other staff members or management. Another way is to mentally visualize a clear glass wall between myself and the speaker. This way I can hear what they are saying, but it cannot get “on” me. It has to stay on their side of the wall.
I once had a very wise mentor ask me how I would go about saving a drowning person. “I would jump in and swim over to them!” He slowly shook his head, “Oh no. A drowning person is a panicked person. They will latch on to you and pull you under with them. The way you save a drowning person is to stand firmly on the shore, throw them a life preserver and pull them to you.”
I must do a better job of keeping my feet firmly on the shore.
Procrastination and Hysteria as a Method for Self Glorification
I’m watching a colleague engage in mass hysteria while trying to finish a project, a project that was put off until the last possible second and now the entire office is in a hysterical uproar trying to meet the deadline. Alas, this is nothing new. This is the way every project is handled; wait until the last minute, rush about like mad, get hysterical and scream at people. Anytime I see behavior I don’t understand I ask myself, “What purpose does it serve?”
I’ve watched this behavior for a couple of years with this particular individual and I’ve divined several purposes, but I became of yet another this morning when he screamed at the receptionist, “Don’t send anyone back here! We’re trying to finish this project by the deadline!”
A Heightened Sense of Their Own Importance
By waiting until the last minute and rushing to finish the deadline, the project is elevated to a higher sense of importance than if it were quietly assembled over the course of a few months rather than a few weeks. If the project on which you are working on is more important, you, by association, are also more important.
Bad Behavior is Justified
The boss is notorious for verbally abusing staff members – on his best days. During the rush to meet a deadline he seems to assume this behavior is now justified and/or excused. Believe me, it isn’t.
The Rush
I think there is also an emotional rush in maniacally trying to beat a deadline that is totally missing when you work on something in a well organized and rational way.
Exemption from Error
Throwing something together at the last minute also gives you an excuse for any errors or omissions which might be present. If everyone in the office saw you steadily and systematically work on this project for three months they would be less likely to understand a major mistake being made than if they saw you rushing around madly, putting it together at the last minute.
Ah well, just my humble observations. Anyone else?