Setting the Mood: Or How Red Jello in Chocolate Sauce can be Terrifying

Remember the old phrase "set the mood?" When I created scenes and coached character creation at haunted houses, murder mysteries, even work training classes it was important to set the mood. What atmosphere? What appearance? What did you want the people you engaged to feel?

 How do you want them to perceive you? What can you do to engineer the sights, sounds, scents, even tastes to create the ambiance you need to make your event a success? Notice the shift: past to present, these considerations are important every day. Consider the difference in the unedited and edited gargoyle pictures below. Quite a difference a little time and effort makes when you approach considering the perceptual outcome you aim to create. 

A local fire department held a halloween party of the town children about thirteen years ago. A safe, free event for the community where they offered halloween themed activities. They wanted to do a free haunted house for the kids. They had costumes and a budget of less than fifty dollars after the candy was bought. They asked me if I could work with them to make it happen. I could use anything in their fire department supplies. Fifty dollars. Why not?
I walked through the fire hall. Picked my entrance and exits. Did we have heavy rope? Yes. Did we have huge heavy canvases to create walls and areas? Yes. We had some tables, weird white christmas lights, gourds, and big pieces of cardboard. It was a farm town so hay bales and heavy gloves were no cost as long as we returned them. Someone gave us several bags of cobwebs with black plastic spiders. Volunteers turned up silver and black and red spray paint. No sound system. No crazy noises. Simple. When it was set up the firemen looked at me. "You sure this is going to work?" I think the guy wielding the chainsaw in a hockey mask said it. It is easier to ask intimidating questions in a mask. The others nodded: the vampire, the gypsy fortune teller, the teenage zombie duo, the crazed coroner who would later be coated with chocolate syrup and red clotted chucks of jello he would randomly wipe off his shirt and eat cackling. He was the hardest one to coach because he did not see how that could be scary while he pulled the bits out of a plastic bag concealed in a scarecrow with a mannequin head.
I knew this question was coming. It is important. It has to be tested. Would my ideas work? The kids were gathered waiting. We went through places and roles, cues and guidelines. Mind you this mismatched group of fiends was getting a pep talk from a gray faced, sharp nosed witch with a scowl that could cut a sword in half. My pointy hat stood tall, the kitchen broom became a magic wand. I called for lights. Darkness fell. Anticipation and anxiety warred in the waiting kids and the questioning volunteers.

The first group of six teens were allowed to enter the narrow black hallway lined with tall oxygen tanks and cobwebs. A heavy gloved hand reached out and touched a shoulder unseen and another. It was a dozen paces. They made it ten. The fifth shoulder got touched and maniacal laugh to trigger the next volunteer was done. The chainsaw revved. The teens turned around and ran back out! The next three groups fared no better. I went from being a roving villain to a terrifying guide. I led the fourth group, that now had a chant. If you are terrified, if you want to push the monsters back so that perhaps you survive long enough for me to steal your soul, then call out "deliver us from evil." The louder you shout, the more of you shout, the more likely it will slow the monsters long enough for you to outrun them. Perhaps." They nodded. They ran through the words, lips moving, making sure they knew them. They entered.
Success! There was a break after all the kids and many adults had gone through several times. They wanted back through, the music of the night was the endless screaming and shouting chant "deliver us from evil." The volunteers gathered, amazed at themselves, amazed at the experience they created together.
Every day we deal with other people and situations. My story was of an external event. Why not apply the same practice to internal perceived events and situations? Do you have to choose to look at a situation or individual as negative? Do you have to be dramatic or antagonistic? Can you change your mood and approach? Instead of approaching with hostility or defensiveness, can you focus on goals and outcomes? Assume the people or situation you are dealing with is not out to get you. Assume instead that if you find the right tact, body language, and approach it will be easier to reach open communication, problem solving, and outcomes that open more doors. The chance for adventure, new friends, new experiences, new foods, different perspectives, new or improved skills could be how you motivate your paradigm shift.
How do you set your mood? What mood and persona do you project out to those around you?

Insert Catchy Motivational Phrase Here

There are easily a thousand motivational phrases. All right and all wrong. What you need to hear may not make it through the radio static of life. Stress comes and goes like a tide. How we perceive and feel regarding events impacts our well-being.

We learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.
Last night I stared under the hood of our van staring at the parts. I know some of their names, can monitor fluid levels and jump batteries. I felt frustration well up. I grew up in a mechanic shop. I spent my time spreading sand on oils spills, taping windows for paint jobs, handing tools to my father and the other alcohol sodden mechanics. They were the best babysitters. I behaved for them because I liked the intricate puzzles of metal they labored over. I asked questions until I fully grasped that I wasn't going to get answers. I was a girl. I wasn't supposed to like engines. I wasn't supposed to learn and being a four year old I respected my elders. I feared getting sent to more sitters who yelled, ignored or bullied me. I should have remembered: I ended up at work with my father because the babysitters kept losing me. I hid from them, escaped from them, made a regular mockery of their attempts to supervise me. I still feared being sent to another mind numbing trailer with moronic shows blaring on a cheap television.
If only minds had been open. If only generations of gender roles had not been so strong in that small town. When I got older I worked at a different tree farm. My family wouldn't hire me as "What would people think of we had women on our construction crew?" At the Cooperative, they thought I was a highly skilled, knowledgeable, hard working member of their propagation team. My rooting rates were remarked on. No one blinked at my gender. They did remark on my colorful vocabulary.
My mistake was acquiescence. I grew out of that. Mostly.

I am not comfortable feeling helpless. I am not comfortable feeling like I'm failing. Is anyone really, or do some just put a better mask? My best and worst attributes come out. My demons circle and whisper louder than thunder. It seems like I'm arguing when I'm listening and arguing to get more detail to better equip myself to deal with myself and situations more effectively.

I've been learning. When these situations arise to stop. Focus forward. Problem solve. Think about past lessons. Think about specific friends and situations that remind you to maintain perspective. Find something to ground with, something to work toward.
Who are your supports? Whether they know it or not, take a moment to reach out of your head to check in on friends. Be there in their moment. Give their voices and conversation a chance to work it's magic. There really is nothing like a smile, friendly voice, a gentle hand on your shoulder, or a focused hug.

Many challenges I navigate through are never expressed aloud. Most come from within. It is humbling to realize you are your best support and worst enemy.

This year I had to face the reality that I cared too much for someone who echoed the worst voices in my head. I let their words enhance the destructiveness of my own shadows. I reached a point where I faced myself. I chose to heal. To grow and to listen to the healing, growing, positive voices instead. I chose to invest in myself. If you don't invest in you, if you do not value you, why would others?

I prepared for Shades of Faerie, nervous about my stories and the event. Taylor Grant and Joshua Safford are amazing storytellers. Would My stories be up to muster? Would my character? Preparing for the event, dealing with last minute details the unexpected happened.

I've spent a lifetime mastering flexibility and acceptance. Make do could be my motto. The guy who was going to do video capture couldn't do it. Omar and I were running errands in Tulsa. He broached the idea of picking up equipment and doing video. It would cost us, but it would be an investment. Initially, an investment in my character and career development; also offering us the option of being able to do video work and other projects. Investing in me, investing in him, investing in us.

The show went well. Compliments and performance awards were given to all three of us for the show.

I think about that often. I've been the one investing in me. My great grandmothers, my grandfathers did before they died. Their investments were emotional. This was a financial investment. From the time I got out of sixth grade, I worked. I made my own money. I bought my own clothes, books, toys. I paid my bills and expenses and played every sport well, got top grades. My parents focused on my siblings. They invested in them.

Having someone invest in you gives you a profound feeling if it's something you are not used to.

Who invests in you? What do you acquiese to? Should you?

Each day is a new day, life is challenges and triumphs. Tragedies and comedies in situations and circumstance that chain from second to second. Finding a way to learn from both in part of being human.

Finding Peace : combining years of working in mental health with storytelling to offer tools for positive growth and change.

https://leanpub.com/guidedmeditationsandothertoolstoreleasenegativestressandemotionaltrauma

Enable versus Empower Healthy Change for 2015

Our society boasts of what we do for our children. We take the fangs and claws from the world and present a fuzzy pink version with anime eyes. We structure their time. We teach them to take tests. We teach them to follow the rules. We do for them. We wonder why they tune us out, why we can't seem to connect. We wonder why they don't respect anything or anyone. Popular mainstream songs suggest sex as a new religion since religion says everyone starts out flawed. Why not start the year by starting to empower our children rather than enable them. Let's teach them to be responsible, let's teach them to strive toward bettering the world. Why gloss over the struggles other children face and focus our children on being self centered and  absorbed on how they look and what they absolutely have to buy. Why not teach them to have substance, to problem solve, to have empathy? Empowering is offering someone the chance to do for themselves, they may succeed or not. Support them, offer them open ended questions and let them work it out. Stop cutting the crusts off the bread. Stop scheduling their days down to the minute. How will they ever learn to appreciate time, goal set and create their own schedules? When you schedule someone to the hilt, what they learn is to live in a routine. They learn to squander free time as if it was just time to wait. It is absurd that people could choose to live life as if it is a waiting room. A beautiful world with more than a million potential REAL experiences, instead we sit and kill time matching shapes or pushing buttons mindlessly on video games. Nothing gained, but time lost that could have been spent appreciating a gorgeous day, a loved one's laugh, learning a new skill or having a meaningful conversation. How do you teach your child to be conscious of the world? What responsibilities do you give your child to foster growth rather than a perpetual child that becomes an adult in age but not maturity? Why is college the new high school? Why doesn't that sound absurd?

Parenting Tips to Stop Enabling Kids - More4kids
Too Much Structure Can Harm Your Child - Dr. Jenn Berman

Did you know that Monarch Butterflies may join the endangered species list? We just have to kill off milkweed with pesticides, as we are more important than the environment. Can't have a few milkweed plants on the farm, fuck some stupid bug? It's not a big deal? There are millions of insects. I happen to think of them as a symbol of life. They are a living work of art. The species has it in their genes to migrate, it takes generations of them to make the migration. Did you think that a monarch butterfly in New York really wings it all the way to Mexico? It may take three or more generations as they make the transition. When I was a child I was taught that monarchs stay in their cocoons all winter. The same teacher told us the next day that it was going to be a harsh, cold winter. I went home and gathered up my mother's empty cardboard jewelry boxes with cotton in them. I went out with my wagon to the milkweed patches. I carefully gathered the cocoons and put one in each box. I put the boxes under my bed where they would be undisturbed and unnoticed. Two weeks later, my mother got home from work and opened the door to over thirty monarch butterflies that burst out into the autumn breeze like orange and black confetti. She never knew why. I was furious because I found that one wasn't strong enough to knock the lid off the box. I would not have left the lids on had I known it would only take two weeks rather than four months for the butterflies to emerge from the cocoon. I went back and confronted the teacher about being wrong. She had the gall to tell me that I was just a kid and didn't know what I was talking about. Come on teachers, research what you teach and don't condescend. Accept that when you say it, kids are going to test it, and they might just prove you wrong or misinformed. Teach them! Empower them. The answer should not be C or all of the above, or pick the longest one as it is usually right. Sadly, I joke about this but my classmates in public and private school found these tactics to work for an average to better than average test score. Did they learn anything or just learn to take tests? I learned from monarch butterflies that part of learning is experience, that you can't always find the answers you are searching for and the best intentions can be the worst choices. Putting the cocoons away for safe keeping against the cold winter was enabling and in the end cost one fragile life. Empowering would have been leaving them on the plants where they belonged. I cared so much I wanted them all to live and by smothering them I failed at the very goal I strove to succeed at. Good lesson for every child to learn, good lesson for every adult to learn. What are monarch butterflies to you? What can you do to help rebuild the populations- empowering a species survival? In Mexico, stop deforestation of habitat there, in the United States stop treating milkweed as a weed. Plant it in your gardens, protect it as a species as it goes hand in hand with the survival of the monarch butterflies. I want to be remembered as someone who chose to improve the world, not as someone who defiled it and turned a blind eye to the abuses others in my species perpetuate on it. 2015, a new year and a new chance to stand up.

Learn about Monarch Butterflies

  Scanning through pins and tweets this morning I noticed that any pictures showing women had once sentence bites about how women have to look their best, and men better like beer and tits. I was saddened that only one article and picture had substance. I was depressed by the substance there.

Oriental cultures do not seem to grasp the importance of valuing species and not trying to exploit endangered species. Japan stop hunting dolphins and whales. Seriously. There is research that demonstrates dolphins have their own language. How do we rate as a species, when we choose to tolerate the callous murder and abuse of another intelligent species? Today, I read about Chinese farms where tigers are raised to turn into pelts and a bone wine that allegedly gives people the feeling that they've temporarily relieved arthritis symptoms. No research to support it, and it is illegal to kill tigers or sell the bone wine; interest was flagging as it was considered terrible. Social pressure decreased sales. Then the farms cropped up and pushed to make sales, they fostered interest. Poachers got back to work in India and other countries to supply bone wine so a few people could claim a little relief, I wonder what miracles would befall them if they tried a dose of ibuprofen or cider vinegar? There are options that do not involve destroying a beautiful species out of self centered, egocentric thinking. We really need to break out of the mold of considering ourselves the only and most important creatures in the world. In a world without diversity, there is no survival or sustaining population. Don't believe me, get a petri dish. Colonize it with one type of singular celled organism. They consume all of the resources there and eventually die out. Life needs life.


Japan Is Back in the Hunt for Whales - NYTimes.com

Learn more about tiger farming

I picked on the orient, but how about a little home introspection? Many of you have heard me gripe loudly against fox and coyote penning. You think America is above abhorrent hobbies? Think again. Fox and coyote penning involves having fenced in areas that usually have electric wire on the top and bottom to keep the prey in, then hunters set packs of dogs loose in the cage. They bet on which dog will rip the fox or coyote up. They watch. They pay people to do this on private land in a lot of eastern states. You thought your local hunting club only went out on British style free release fox hunts? Think again. They justify it claiming it is humane and that they are hunting pest animals, but it's okay because they were raised on farms. These sound logical to you? Stop supporting them. Stop supporting farming animals for their pelts, that doesn't make it any better. You don't look sexy wearing a fox or coyote tail, or putting a fox face skin mask on your head. Support a face painter, get a painting of a fox instead or a mask. Many artists do lifelike masks that don't leave me thinking of Leatherface when I see them. It just advertises your willingness to endorse apathy to another species. The older I get, the less tolerant I become. I choose to purchase meat and eggs from local farms that use responsible practices. I don't support mistreatment of animals. Dog fights and the culture that fosters them still perpetuates abuse of animals. We can choose to pressure people to stop. We can choose to support legislation to punish abusive animal owners instead of just slapping them on the wrist with a little fine. We can change this, it is absurd that we have not. Let's start 2015 right. Let's start by changing how we respect other species.

Fox Penning : The Humane Society of the United States
Coyote & Fox Penning - Project Coyote

I don't support abuse toward humans either. I picked up the paper to read an article on South Korea. While you are all hating on the ruler in North Korea, did you know that South Korea has a BIG problem with slavery? No? I didn't until this morning. There was a story about a homeless man offered a job and a place to stay. He jumped at it, only to find it was slave labor at a salt mine. He was not paid. The man who turned him in was paid $700 for him. Living accommodations were appalling. He and others tried to escape and were returned by community members who were corrupt and supported the slave owner. They were beaten. They did not consent to being slave labor in salt mines. The local police were paid off to look the other way and help return escaping slaves. The story ended on the happy note of the man getting a letter out to his mother one of the times he tried to escape. His mother went to the authorities in Seoul, who went undercover and caught the slave owner. The problem is, he wasn't the only one. There are more who do it, and they offer money to turn a blind eye. Before we scowl at Korea, don't we let lobbyists pay our legislators to shape legislation with regard to who has the money versus the wellbeing of constituents? How absurd it is that we haven't pressured changes to legislation to stop lobbyists? Did you know that most Congressmen retire to become lobbyists and get three times the pay they got in Congress? Did you know that, when these one time legislators were interviewed they all said they get more accomplished now as lobbyists than they did as Congress? Maybe we should be picking our lobbyists instead of wondering at the ineptitude of elected officials who are being paid by private interests to be inept! New year, new start. We have to be honest with ourselves if we want to make real, positive change. If we want a better year to be more than just a yearly lip service we do as a ritual without really attending to it.

The Facts – The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day …

Let's set some goals for the year, choose to treat our own bodies with respect. Choose to respect the world as something other than a resource to use. We are not ticks and leeches, let's demonstrate that. Let's teach our children to be capable, mature adults. Let's empower them and each other, let's stop enabling.

The Absurdity of Modern Priorities

The Absurdity of Modern Priorities

Tired of hearing advertisements and news bites? Tired of hearing about social and environmental issues? It is absurd how everything is so amazing and terrible at the same time. Planes getting lost, countries struggling with recession, pollution from the nuclear plants in Japan continuing to have a devastating effect on the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes you just want to massage your ears, sometimes you wish you could massage your mind. Feeling like the issues around you are sometimes distorted to influence how you choose to live and what you choose to buy. Gofundthis one or that one instead of buying a good or product from them to support them. I am not against supporting people. I just wonder why we don't choose to buy products from someone or work out contracts with them when we want to endorse them, instead we encourage them to ask us for handouts. Why not be a real support and offer them sales, share and offer feedback to encourage others to do the same? Why not offer connections and a hand up?

Danny Lord massaging his ears after the latest tedious advertisements.

It is absurd that every time the sky becomes cloudy, the news channels start describing the latest Weather Apocalypse unfolding outside your door. People suddenly rush to stores, stock up on groceries, cancel plans to go to outdoor events and they hunker down. They turn on the television, they surf the web. They inundate themselves with short, edited videos to distract themselves. They watch the antics of animals, pranks, crazy things caught on video. We spend our time using applications. Ten years ago an application was something you filled out to get a job. Now it's a little icon you click on to open a program designed to be user friendly. Something to make your world easier or to distract you from this one.

It is absurd to watch people sit on their phones and tablets on a beautiful sunny day, instead of appreciating the world around them. Touching, smelling, observing, and talking; living outside of our heads. It is absurd that more restaurants do not have signs requesting or requiring people to minimize their phone use and socialize. We are going to have to start offering classes to teach people how to socialize without a small rectangular box.

How many hours a day do people log in and play virtual games? How much time do you spend in virtual worlds? Out of curiosity I spent a few months playing several games, the games are designed to encourage you to play frequently with time sensitive settings that limit how much you can play unless you send invitations to your friends and allow the games to post on your Facebook timeline. You find yourself thinking "it's been five hours, I should have enough points back that I could finish this or that task." Instead of going out on a hike, learning local plants and wildlife; instead of working or volunteering to better the world; you're watching cartoon graphics.

This month I have started using Duolingo, I set goals for how much I want to learn and practice every day. I am working on improving my spanish skills. In one month, I have taken a few minutes every day and am now at a point where I can read over 50% of written spanish communications. One month. What does a Farmville or Castle Dragon trophy get you? What does it do for you to level up at Candy Crush Saga? Nothing. You cannot put them on your resume. They do not enhance your skills, your ability to think, create, dream, imagine. They just distract you and your time slides away. The value of your time depreciates.

This summer I stayed with a friend who loves gardening. She was very busy, so I tended her plants. Every day I went out and watered them. It only took several minutes a day. Had we planned ahead, we could have grown a full garden! I watch people play games where they grow crops, build houses and create empires. I find it absurd that someone will waste their time planting a virtual garden when they could go outdoors and plant a real one. Instead of wasting their time watching pixels they could enjoy the real thing. It's winter? Indoor garden or spend the time learning different gardening techniques.

Still don't think the virtual reality that we over prioritize is absurd? Remember Guitar Hero? Remember how many people picked up plastic instruments and began to play? Remember how good they THOUGHT they got, only to find out that after hours and hours and hours of practice… They had NOT gained any actual skill and could NOT play an actual instrument.

Why do we have to do surveys to find out what superhero or cartoon character or mythological being we are? Why do we need to associate ourselves with some generic quiz that really has no relation to reality to validate or amuse ourselves? What does it matter which character you are like? Are you really like a character from a fiction or are you a unique and complex individual that should take pride in who and what they are instead of having to build ourselves up by saying 'see I'm like this and like that.'

People who know us, know what we are really like. People who care about us do not care about whether we are like a dragon or an angel. Truth is we aren't like any of the fictional people, animals or creatures. We are all different. We are unique. It is absurd that we devalue and depreciate ourselves by condensing ourselves into canned, generic answers someone wrote to amuse themselves as they wasted their time creating the survey! The surveys are a clever way to get us to advertise products, just like clothing with company logos. We pay in time to be walking and sharing advertisements. Sad thing is, we share these things first.

We share articles that fit our political views. We share pictures. We could share links to our friends work to help them connect and grow. Instead we share surveys and game requests, we spend our time shifting shapes into patterns to reach the next level. We choose not to spend the time improving our life skills or doing little things that improve our lives and our world.

We miss out on the experiences we could be having. We miss out on laughing and loving. Choose to skip the surveys and be yourself. Learn how to do a balancing act with a snail or not.

The snail actually balanced quite well. It could have a future in entertainment. 

When did you laugh most recently? When did you do something absurd? When did you do something to improve yourself? Be honest, how much time do you spend each day letting your life go by as your fingers keep pace on the hammer wheel of your virtual world?

What are your priorities? Do you let the media shape them? Do you let your smartphone and applications shape them? Is it time for you to play your game or pass a survey on?

Why not pass on something to provoke the mind? Why not work on improving yourself and your world? No matter how much we choose to bury world news under the pabulum of memes and pop star coverage, the reality is there. There was a cartoon once of Nero passionately playing the fiddle while Rome burned behind him. Are we choosing to allow inept politicians and greedy corporations to determine the quality and condition of our world in trade for the virtual one they offer us as a cheap distraction? It is our choice, not theirs. We make it every time we choose to sit for a session of Castle Dungeon Candy Farm Zombie World Assault or whatever the latest game is, we make it when we share surveys and memes instead of links to help others in need or encouraging sales for local businesses and friends. Let's choose to empower people rather than enable absurdity.

Emotional Trauma and The Absurdity of How We Respond

Emotional Trauma and the Absurdity of How We Respond

There is nothing absurd about trauma. Do not treat someone who has gone through trauma as if their reactions are too much or absurd! Do not belittle them or rush them in how they deal with it. Impatience only adds to the difficulty they experience. Be a REAL support! 

Emotional trauma happens, we do not want it to but it happens in life. Everyone is a separate individual. Everyone has different thoughts, feelings, drives, desires and aversions. Everyone experiences life events from a different perspective.

One of the first critical lessons we learned in my graduate courses regarding trauma was mind bending. One of the biggest, most traumatic source of conflict comes from the aftermath of trauma. People living in the same house experience different relationships with one another. Two siblings can have opposite experiences. Neighbors and friends of the family may see only the 'public' face and not bear witness to the words that aren't posted on the Facebook feed. Different people have completely different experiences of the SAME event! Your parent may have complimented you and bought you wonderful gifts, but turned around and guilt tripped your sibling, embarrassing them and buying them cheap unwanted baubles.

People assume that their friends and relatives feel and act the same whether they are in public or not. They assume that they would make decisions the same way that they do. They put words in their mouths. They hear the words and judge the feelings to be there. They do this with no idea of what really went on, no idea of how what they are saying could be harmful as they were not there. They were not a fly on the wall watching abuse or neglect. They only have the glib words and public face, the persona adopted by someone to be successful outside of their house.

We always want to help. Especially when the holidays come around. Family is part of the holiday theme, so is togetherness. There is a black and white movie appeal at bringing estranged family together again. Stop! Do you know that the holidays are a time of stress for those who have trauma in their past? Many have found balance or peace, they turn their faces forward and appreciate the good in life while you reach out and shake their shoulders and spin them around saying "They LOVE you, I know!" The worst injustice, the cruelest act of kindness that you could ever do. Never assume. Assuming in someone else's relations is absurd. You are not them, if you respect their ability to make decisions then accept that they have good reasons for making the choices they have.

You are wonderful for wanting to help them heal! You are caring, you mean well! Let me give you a better suggestion.

Listen to them. Ask them open ended questions. Never use words that indicate that you know someone else's feelings or thoughts. Validate their emotions and experiences. Offer them support. Do not try to reconnect people. Do not take word of one to the other. To someone who had trauma in their past, words put in the mouths of the people who scarred their hearts are like sharp knives. They can easily slice open old wounds.

Look at the people who cry out about how wonderful they are and how tragic it is that someone in their family or an ex will not respond to their attempts to connect. I don't mean look on the surface. I mean how honest are they? Do they work hard to always have the right appearance? Do they manipulate others into viewing them the way they choose? Are they manipulative? Do they have mood swings? What do they say and how do they sound when they lose their temper? Do they misuse substances? Do they have trauma in their past, that they may or may not have dealt with?

Keep your thoughts to yourself but you may see the edges of their carefully created fabrication if you really look. They REALLY do want you to approve of them. They REALLY do want you to believe that they care. In a warped way, they probably do. Abusers and people who are neglectful dislike it when others realize they are flawed. They do not like being called out. They will claim that what is said is lies, while rewriting the past in their minds. They change their history, they believe the new words. "I fell down the stairs, the dog ran off, he loves me." See eventually, the abused learns to believe them too.

It becomes a cycle. It passes from one generation to the next. The cycle can be broken. You can support someone who is struggling. Encourage them to be honest to themselves. Validate their experiences. Hug them. Laugh with them. Keep their eyes focused forward. When they get frustrated or stressed, encourage them to use their skills to face the challenges. Never put someone else's words in your mouth. Even if you are a parent, a lover, a sister, a brother- even if you are loving, not everyone else is the same as you. Many pay lip service to saying they are but often behind closed doors are not.

Some people get mired in trauma. They dwell in it every day. Help them get passed it by encouraging them to seek professional help. If they are already doing that but still playing the drama card, it is self esteem they lack.

Self esteem takes work to build, especially when it was destroyed when a child was growing up. Self esteem has no relation to how smart you are, how nice you are, how talented you are. Self esteem is about how you feel about yourself in relation to the world. Do you value yourself? Do you value what you have to offer the world? 

It is absurd how many people in this country struggle with self esteem issues, and yet we do not teach how to enhance it in school! We haphazardly cobble together treatments for substance abuse, depression, anxiety, social disorders… These can be caused by other issues BUT often self esteem plays the largest role. We do nothing to stop the perpetual cycle of self esteem destruction in the next generation. We do nothing to empower them. We enable them. We teach them to take tests. We give them technology that they can use to learn languages and other cultures-instead they use it for video games and gossip. Who taught them that? 

When I worked substance abuse treatment I taught anger management. I have taught thousands of veterans anger management. Vets came from other states to the treatment program I worked at, just to take my classes. We did not use the cookie cutter book. We talked about real, valid emotions. We waded through the ugly emotions and addressed the thoughts as well. We went over the body's response to stimuli that we perceive as causing anger. We discussed ways to manage anger not just count to ten and skip away. Funny it is in every book, but when someone has REAL anger-they admit they use the ten count to aim!

The vets I worked with stayed after the group one day. A room full of guys sat waiting. I asked what everyone was hanging back for. They looked at each other. The bravest one spoke. He said they had talked. They all knew that what they really needed was self esteem. They had no idea how to learn it. They had talked about who could teach them. They knew that their anger, their substance abuse, their interpersonal conflicts arose from their self esteem issues. They chose me to teach them. I sat down. Self esteem is a tough topic. It comes from perception based on emotions. When it is negative or defunct, you are going to face all that in helping someone heal it. I have gone through it myself.

People can recognize when someone has. The vets knew. They asked me to create the groups. I went to my boss and obtained permission. I gave it a lot of thought. I did research on what was out there. There was a curious lack of resources. Just Pollyanna Sunshine butterflies and rainbow pictures saying "believe in yourself." If it were that simple, no one would struggle at all. No one chooses to have low self esteem. I went to a coworker I respected. Chaplain Jerry, he taught another group with me and in had told me how he dealt with low self esteem in his own life in the past. I asked Jerry to help me create the groups. I showed him what I had, he and I created a series of groups that would span eight weeks with two-one hour sessions a week. After that, individuals could stay in an advanced group meeting weekly to work on projects.

We watched the movie "Pay It Forward." The vets in the group identified events in their past as well as how they handled them that affected their self esteem. The events that had a negative impact more often than not related to someone else's statements or judgement of them! The things that were destroying them were the words of someone else!

How do you build self esteem? Accomplish what is in your heart, be active in doing the things you love. Building confidence. Building successes, setting goals and working toward them. Achievements. Exercise and good diet. Mostly, learning to listen to the little voice in your heart. Learning that what it says is valid. Choosing to do what is in your heart; whether it is to stand up and say "no more" or to go to a soup kitchen and volunteer--these things can build a self esteem that has been beat into the ground.

For the holidays, instead of dishing out words from someone else's mouth, give support. Help build up the people you love. Keep other people's words out of your mouth!

I am working on a book on Healing Trauma and Guided Meditations. I will address this more in the book.