Technique #4 - Werenty

Technique #4 – Werenty

Definition:  nonfunctional worry

Story

“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”

Swedish proverb

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his death
bed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”

Winston Churchill,
statesman

“Worry is like arocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.”

Erma Bombeck,
writer

This blog is heavy on quotes because there are so many pithy comments on worry.  There may be more uotes on worry that there are legitimate things to worry about.  The totally real fictitious culture called Sen divide worry into two types, functional and nonfunctional, and put a name of the latter – werenty.  Worry is built into our genes and very deeply related to our survival.  Unless you are 1) a fool, 2) have spent several reincarnated lifetimes in Buddhist meditation or mindfulness training, or 3) employ your own cartel to provide sufficient drugs to blot sentience, you will likely be like the vast human tragedy of worriers.  [A “tragedy of worriers” is sort of like a “flock of geese,” or a “saunter of pedestrians” (in crosswalks in front of where I am trying to make a turn because I will be late for someone’s funeral; not that they care, but I can’t be late!).]   

The good thing about worry – it helps us focus on a problem.

Still for me, the anxiety associated with worry, can be immobilizing.  Like many of you, I can even worry in my sleep.  After decades post-school I still periodically wake up in the middle of the night perspiring over having to take a final exam for a class I never took and in a room I cannot find.  I sometimes center myself with a bit of Irish wisdom pinned over my desk:

In life, there are only two things to worry about—

Either you are well or you are sick.

If you are well, there is nothing to worry about,

But if you are sick, there are only two things to worry about—

Either you will get well or you will die.

If you get well, there is nothing to worry about,

But if you die, there are only two things to worry about—

Either you will go to heaven or hell.

If you go to heaven, there is nothing to worry about.

And if you go to hell, you’ll be so busy shaking hands with all your friends

You won’t have time to worry!

An Irishman’s
Philosophy

Whether I am able to calm my anxiety or not – and I suspect that the Irish person who coined this saying was probably as desperate a lad or lassie as the rest of us – there are different approaches to dealing with worry, functional approaches and nonfunctional ones.  The three quotes at the beginning of this blog all poke fun at the nonfunctional type of response – werenty.  The Swedish proverb and Churchill quote agree that most worry looms larger at the time than it could be in the total context of our lives. 

“If you want to
test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”

E. Joseph Cossman,
businessman (from postivityblog.com, The Positivity Blog 2014/07/16, Henrik Edberg) 

For the fictional Sen, they would look at worry more as a prod to pay attention in order to solve a problem … as if, now I am worried that I am so delusional that I listen to fictional characters.  But how about the wisdom of Harold Stephens, a man who had more than his fair share of things to worry about – he had to go work in the Coal mines after his farmhouse burned down, then ended up fighting in the Battle of Okinawa.   

“There is a great difference between worry and concern.  A worried person sees a problem, and a concerned person solves a problem.”

Harold Stephens, author

For me, and I think “me” speaks for many of my fellow anxious life travelers, turning anxiety and werenty into worry and finally into concern and focus, is the key to getting out of Erma Bombeck’s rocking chair.  I try to look at what worry has distracted my mind toward, looking at it as a problem to be solved, sometimes as someone else’s problem, just to give myself emotional distance from it.  What’s the harm?  There can actually be fun in problem solving; but there is no fun in werenty.  I will not say that, for most problems I follow Bobby McFerrin’s song handle in Don’t worry, Be happy, but I do try to employ functional worry.  For the really hard to solve problems, I recruit someone else – friend, therapist, emotional support ferret – to be someone that sits outside my crazy zone, at my side, but not in my emotional undertow, a person or animal that stands by and provide requested advice while I find my own solution to my problem. 

And, for the big problem that I will likely not solve, I am comforted that there will be many friends to greet me in hell!

More on this huge subject of worrying in future blogs.  What are you stories?

Technique #3 - Uncoiler

Technique #3 – Uncoiler

Definition: a releaser of tension

Story

“I don’t do well
with snakes and I can’t dance.”

Robin Williams,
comedian

I’m not afraid of
heights, I just really respect them. 
That’s why I stay away from the edge!

James Hauenstein,
Goodreads author

or,

“I’m not afraid of
heights, but the idea of falling from them, well, that I’m afraid of.”

Laurell K.
Hamilton, Cerulean Sins author

Coiling can be a reliable warning of bad things to come.  As can be too easily verified, desert rattlers coil before they strike.* Coiling clouds present a similar warning!  I learned that while camping in upper New York State.  A tornado lifted a boat from a nearby lake and nearly deposited it on what was left of our campground destination.  Tornadoes combine my fear of moving very fast, together with my fear of heights.  Naturalists learn nature’s warning coils.

So what is the solution to a threatening snake or tornado?  With human interactions, we do a lot of fight or flight, but what about a third way – untighten, or uncoil as it is called in Senland, a landscape full of coiled snakes. 

To uncoil, you have to first notice the coil, and many go unnoticed.  I imagine some “former” naturalists did not!  Result is a strike or a fall.  Strike – failing to notice my bosses folded arms at our weekly staff meeting when I pattern her skill at ignoring her boss’s directives.  Fall – having the overconfidence to claim that I fully knew the directions to the campsite, only to drive my wife and two kids into the next state – a fall and increased are-we-there-yet torture, although in this case a good thing, considering the tornado that hit the campsite during our delay! 

I started this post with quotes by comedians because comedians are genies that release pent up tensions.  They are expert uncoilers of societal or personal tensions.  As a wit (theentertainingelf.com) said, “Handle every stressful situation like a dog.  If you can’t eat it or play with it, just pee on it and walk away.”  Or, I might add, do as the wit did, uncoil.

Here is one of my uncoilings:

I was clothes-lined while diving my motorcycle and, after flipping backwards ass over head, landing on my butt and checking to confirm that my head was still attached, asked a horrified onlooker whether she would like a ride.  I’ll never know whether she appreciated my uncoiler.  She declined and walked away … quickly.  Onlookers are often smarter than motorcycle riders.

Please share your uncoiler story, humorous or not!

Did you make up any technique of your own?  Share it!

*Author’s corollary: Snakes don’t have to coil to strike, as I was about to discover before my wife halted me from sitting on a lounging copperhead snake warming itself on a boulder along a hiking path in Maryland. 

Technique #2 - Penning

Technique #2 – Penning  

Definition:  Confining a fear, as in corralling a threatening animal in a pen until it can be dealt with at a more appropriate time.

Let’s take, for example, penning a potbelly pig.  Perhaps some of you have a domesticated potbelly pig and even sleep with it.  While this blog does not take a position on sleeping with a potbelly pig, the action might suggest that you are not good at penning.  Or, perhaps you have invented your own version of penning.  If so, what do you call it?  Should we call a psychiatrist?

Here is one of my stories.  It involves a potbelly pig and other problem animals.

Stories*

I don’t enjoy the part about public speaking that has me anxiously vomiting over my notes; perhaps we can call this problem anxiety a sheep.  I was helped in my penning of this anxiety while sitting 5 minutes before a scientific talk when my 12-year-old son text messaged me as to why, on the way to the talk, I had forgotten him and his 7-year-old sister at the local grocery store, where, anticipating the sheep, I had gone to pick up Pepto-Bismol.  I texted my wife to pick up the kids, took extra Pepto-Bismol, and “penned” this new problem until after my talk.  I will call this new problem a bull since it is bigger and more menacing than a sheep. [Substituting a bull for a sheep is not an ideal solution to sheep problems.]  In any event, the sheep was forgotten, and the bull was penned.  There would be plenty of time later to deal with family, including but not limited to (i) picking up some sweets for the kids, (ii) making amends to my wife who will have to leave the mother’s group she was hosting, explaining to all assembled why she will still perhaps not divorce me, preferring instead to use my absentmindedness as leverage to buy, perhaps, a potbelly pig.

*Since I am not writing these stories anonymously, and to prevent harm to my family, I may indulge in a combination of fiction and non-fiction, but I promise that all my posts will almost be true or false.  I encourage as much openness by fictitious or non-fictitious blog participants as familial and friend prudence allow. 

Sen Techniques #1 - See-saw

In the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight, after having had all his limbs severed in a sword fight, announces, “All right, we’ll call it a draw.”

This Monty Python absurdist take on the King Arthur tale is funny, in a wincing way, yet we don’t laugh at all at someone who has been shoved down in the dirt by a schoolyard bully.  We feel sympathy for the victim, and we collectively take a breath and hope for the victim to get up, dust off, and either confront the bully or walk away with dignity.  In my life, I have been both the kid that got up to box the bully – sometimes with a purple eye that made it impossible to convince the schoolyard monitor that I hadn’t been fighting – but also the political pacifist tempting fate, and trying to keep the Black

Knight’s hubris as an inside joke and a comfort. I have also been the Kindergarten show-off turned inadvertent bully who, during recess, slid off of a see-saw with a girl on the other end.  I’m guessing I was trying to impress her with my teasing cleverness and dexterity.  The see-saw slammed to the ground and her butt with it.  She cried and I, mortified as a child could be, and failing to find a place to hide, was admonished by the teacher.  The girl got up, brushed herself off, and regained her pride as soon as the sting wore off.  For me, every time I see a see-saw, the guilt returns.  My childhood friend’s recovery is an example of the Sen technique of see-saw.  See-saw implores us to get up, dust off, and get on with life.  If it were only so easy when slamming your own pride to the ground.  Every day, I try to become just a little more of the Black Knight in facing my own self-inflicted see-saws!

Please comment, or share your own story, humorous, not so, or both.