Category Archives: simplify

Ouch! Hey! and, Yay!

It can be hard for parents to make the changes they see would be best for their families. Every good idea seems like a Sisyphean struggle.

Sometimes it’s useful to start very small. Let’s begin with a short, very simplified review of behavior modification from Psych 101. We’ve got positive reinforcement (YAY), negative reinforcement (also YAY) and punishment by application – life does something to you (OUCH), or withdrawal, when life takes something away (HEY!).

Let’s say it is noonish on a pleasant day, I have a break, and decide to take a walk outside. I will enjoy the breeze, the birds singing, a chance to move and clear my head. I will come back to the desk feeling invigorated. I have been positively reinforced. I did an action, or stopped an action, that resulted in something good (my uplifted mood).

A few hours later, it will be about 3 PM and I may have the beginning of a headache. I glance at my water bottle and realize I am way behind on fluids, so I drink a few glugs of water. In short order, the headache dissipates. I have been negatively reinforced: I did a desirable action, and something bad went away.

Punishment, on the other hand, is entirely different. If, feeling a bit bored, I decide to scroll through the news of the day, I might feel depressed and then realize I have wasted my break reading bad news (HEY!).  Or, I may notice the beginnings of a headache and, instead of a drink of water, start with a few chunks of delicious, smooth dark chocolate and then (OUCH) my headache may well get worse.

The point of this little meander through intro psych lessons is that, when making changes, maybe it will progress better if you find ways to start with positive and negative reinforcement rather than what will seem like punishments.

For example, let’s say you think that at least one weekend afternoon of family time without devices would be a good start. Teens and even younger children may not agree. Wrestling their phones and tablets away is feasible, but they will consider this HEY!, and their resulting dopamine withdrawal symptoms to be OUCH for them; their miserable behavior may be a big OUCH for you.  But if a family activity inherently means no devices and then everyone has fun, we now have a big YAY in place the OUCH and HEY! What might that include?

Being outdoors in nature, where devices may not work properly anyway. A movie outing. A museum that requires devices be silent and away. Physical activities. Someplace where there is no phone or internet signal. Or just take a deep breath and impose device-off mode around a slice of a day and spend it in actively doing things that would not be improved by device distractions. Have fun. Don’t lecture about how fun it was (that’s an OUCH). If your kid mentions it was pretty fun, you can agree and take that as YAY – an invitation to repeat as possible.

It’s Just an Experiment

You know how it is. You want to make a change. Something needs to change. Maybe the kitchen needs organizing, or you need to sleep better, or be less stressed…whatever it may be. You want to get it “right.” And that’s where the freeze happens. “Right.  It has to be right.”

But what if there’s no way to know what is right for you without experimenting?

For all the chatter the past few years about science, and following science, there seems to be a misunderstanding of what science is. Science is more of a verb that a noun. It has more in common with, Hey, let’s try THIS and see what happens, than with learning a few things and deciding that’s it – that’s all there is to know.  You can see the difference in real time when SpaceX runs another experiment with the super heavy and the personnel there are excited about how much they’re learning and thus able to improve, while some people in the press call it a “failure.”  No, “failure” would be not doing or, having done, failing to study and learn. That’s failure.

At an individual level, let’s say you decide to take guitar lessons. You have no idea how to do anything with a guitar, but it’s been a long-time dream. Unless you are younger than five, you surely wouldn’t pick up the guitar, strum at it, and wonder why you didn’t sound like Carlos or Angus or Eric or Brian or whomever. You would have to spend many hours, experiment after experiment, building and reinforcing the new neural connections and fine motor skills that lead to the ability to play guitar. You would not call the outcome after the first, or tenth, or thirtieth, lesson a “failure,” properly, unless you gave up in impatient disgust and stuck the guitar in the closet, where it will peek at you through the clothes hanging in front of it and reproach your surrender until you sigh and try again or give the guitar away.

If you are looking at making a change, and feeling stuck, reframe what you are doing as experimenting.  Move the coffee mugs to that cabinet, over there, closer to the coffee maker, and see how you like it.  Buy a battery-operated alarm clock and leave your phone in the kitchen overnight for a few weeks and see what happens. Try turning screens off during meals, or leaving the audio off in the car, for a month or so.

Start the experiment, and then pay attention. That’s a critical part of an experiment. What happens in the absence of the old behavior? What seems better? What’s harder? What is your theory on why it’s better or worse? Can you build another little experiment – not a long-term commitment – on this one? It’s an experiment, for goodness’ sake, not a marriage.  That is science, and that is a way to get unstuck, make changes and work around any lurking perfectionism.

Random Life Lessons

Here, on a beautiful autumn day, are a few life lessons I’ve picked up on the way…perhaps one will be useful to you.

Walking in the morning, before sunrise, can lead to being stopped by law enforcement, who, upon getting a look at me from the front (wrinkles and rosary beads) say things like, “Oh. I thought you were a kid out breaking into cars.”  Wearing a reflective vest and a skort, instead of baggy gym shorts, has solved that problem. Either that or I have succeeded in looking old from behind. The lessons: be reflective and dress appropriately to the task at hand.

Don’t save special stuff for special occasions.  Eventually someone else will just throw your treasure away or it will end up, sad and dusty, on a thrift store shelf. Use it up, whether it’s that fancy cocoa mix someone gave you at Christmas or your grandmother’s crystal. Drink sweet tea out of a fancy goblet.

Not from personal experience (see a prior post about this issue) If you change your hairstyle and/or color on a regular basis, you might not be the best candidate for a tattoo. The same goes if you try to destroy or at least hide any photos of you from five or more years ago because you can’t believe you left the house looking like that.

If there is something you really want to do, and it’s realistic for you, then pick a reasonable time frame (say, one year) and reverse engineer backwards all the way to tomorrow. If you want to achieve “X” – your G.E.D., your master’s degree, a marathon, writing your first book – there will be something specific that you do and/or don’t do tomorrow that is different than yesterday. Then the next day, you will, again, do/not do something different because you have this goal. If it’s your G.E.D., and you want to pass by one year from now, then the first thing to do is look up where to go for information. Then call the place. Then go. Then decide what you will give up to make time to study. Then do that: give up some of that time to study. Learn how to study (a lot of people get to college without knowing how to study; no shaming). And study again and again. Enlist people who will encourage you because it will be hard and discouraging and there will be people who try to pull you off course.

Don’t spend time around people who discourage you when you are trying to become a better person. If you have thought things through, and realized you must change some habit or adopt a new plan for life, and wise people agree it is a good move, then be very skeptical about the motivation of people who try to interfere.

Unless you have doctor’s orders to the contrary, odds are that alcohol is not your friend. Remember when Pinot told you what a great dancer you were at your cousin’s wedding?  Or how some kind of brown liquor helped you straighten out that miscommunication with your in-laws? Yeah, not your friend. Besides, alcohol is eager to share bad things: disrupted sleep, increased risk of cancer (it’s a major factor in a number of types of cancer), dementia, prematurely aging skin and who knows what else. Disclaimer: I don’t drink and I’m not in recovery, which means this one comes from 1) observing life and 2) reading the medical research.

Be wary of people who think it is funny to scare animals. A guest who tries to frighten your cat because it’s “funny” when the cat’s fur stands on end needs to go away and not visit again. This is a red flag, no matter how “nice” you thought this person was. They exert power by terrifying others; is that nice? No. If a five-year-old could easily explain it, I shouldn’t have to say another word.

The above does not include the person who is willing to make an absolute ass of themselves trying to scare a squirrel, bunny, rat, lizard, etc., out from under their parked car so they can leave without killing it. 

Try, if you can, to be patient with people who act as if they didn’t need to let you know about something they wanted you to know about because they put it on social media. Give yourself permission to explain that you don’t spend time looking for something you ought to know on social media. Unless you do, in which case you have bigger problems, perhaps, than missing one person’s newscast.

And, in closing, bear in mind that one person’s life lesson is not necessarily yours…but then again, maybe it could be.

I Just Needed to Vent about That

Back in my running days, I once reached mile 18 in a marathon when I noticed the blood coming through my running shoes. “Didn’t you notice?” I was asked. I said, no, not really, as I changed socks and went back to the run. You might think I have the pain tolerance of a superhuman, but that’s not the case at all. First twinge and I am on the phone with my dentist’s office, where everyone knows me by first name. Discomfort comes in categories and for me, blisters, in the context of a marathon, were in one category and dental pain in an entirely different one.

This issue of categories of discomfort intersects with the variety of responses to life’s pains and problems.

“I just need to vent.”

“Sorry – I’m just going to vent.”

“Look, I don’t need any advice – I just need to sort of verbal vomit this stuff.”

Lots of ways to say it, but the short form is “vent.” As in, blow off steam, let off a bit of pressure. It sounds like a good idea, right? I mean, holding all that in can’t be good for us.

And neither, as it happens, is merely venting for the sake of venting. With a caveat.

That caveat is the situation in which someone really is in a painfully difficult situation in which there are no tenable options except to endure it. Consider, for example, the pain of the spouse who is caregiver to their dying husband or wife. They have already accepted the help of Hospice or palliative care; friends and family have stepped up. But the loneliness, the grief, the pain and exhaustion still are there. This is a person who can benefit from some venting to a compassionate listener who isn’t going to give them silly advice or trite encouragement.

Then there are all the rest of us.

Venting, in small doses, here and there, might be helpful. It stops being helpful when it becomes some sort of permanent coping mechanism, perhaps even seemingly a part of the personality.  Consider the coworkers who deal with unhappy work situations by commiserating over drinks or takeout week after week but never find the time to look for something better. They keep the level of discomfort just within tolerable levels by venting and indulging in bonding-in-misery.  Perhaps it’s the person for whom griping is a personality trait: anything is fair game. They confuse unmet whims with discomfort. Real discomfort has a very useful purpose.

Discomfort lets you know there’s a problem. Sometimes the problem is serious, and sometime it isn’t. Elite athletes, including very dedicated amateurs, react to pain differently from the non-elites.  An elite athlete will disregard non-critical discomfort and stop on a dime if the wrong sort of twinge – something a non-athlete might not even notice – suddenly starts. That’s why a marathoner will be surprised at their bloody socks at the end of a race but would have stopped a workout if there was a fleeting not-right sensation in the back of the knee.

If you’re a “venter,” maybe it’s worth reflecting on if you are habitually venting – like a beginning exerciser who thinks every stitch in their side is an emergency. Or are you more like a semi-regular exerciser, who can tell the difference between serious and nonserious discomfort, but would like an excuse to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep- so you vent instead of taking constructive action? Perhaps you keep venting in its place: very occasionally, but mostly for the times when options are very limited.

Please share about the day with your loved ones, including the joys and frustrations. Just realize that if the same frustrations keep being aired, that something in the situation needs reflection and change – whether it’s the circumstances or the approach to them. After all, in a year, or two, or five, do you want to be having the same conversation about the same problem?

What’s in your backpack?

I was speaking with someone reluctant to make any sort of commitment to a small change in the routine. Things were not going well for my friend, and the future seemed murky. With no clear picture of “where the journey is heading,” taking any first step seemed imprudent, my partner in conversation asserted; it would be better to wait until the “where” is sorted out in life before making a concerted effort in any direction.

One reasonable response to that is, there is no “standing still” in life: attempting to stand still just means things around you will change while you pretend you can hold your position.  See how that works for you standing in the ocean. Maybe that seems trite; the whole “you never step into the same river twice” trope that is, as it happens, absolutely true.

Another way of looking at my friend’s dilemma is this: no matter where my journey is going, some items always go in the backpack. I may not always need the water purification straws, or the sleeping bag rated for freezing weather, but I always need underwear and socks. I always need a spare pair of contact lenses and sunscreen. I always need a small Bible. I always need chocolate and my thyroid medicine. Even without knowing where, or when, I’m going, some things can go into the backpack.

No matter where your life journey is taking you, wouldn’t it be helpful to have a better quality of sleep? More physical energy?  A firmer sense of what your values are, and why, and what the implications are for daily life? A little less messiness in the closet or refrigerator or your car? Less weird clutter and mysterious crumpled papers in that one drawer? Some better thinking habits, whether it’s taking on a phobia or developing your capacity for focused attention?

Even if you’re feeling really stuck – a lot of pressures, an unhappy job situation, the first year or so into significant grief – perhaps there is one small thing you can do first– something you can “put into the backpack” – without a clear picture of where you hope to be heading. And, as you’re putting those essentials into your pack, perhaps the mystery of the next few steps on the journey will begin to come into focus.

Happy trails –

Life-Changing Hacks

Confession: I really dislike the term “hack.” It sounds awful, like a data breach somewhere, drenching the dark web with the personal info of thousands of people. It also used to mean someone whose work was poorly done and usually rushed, or the work itself. Somehow it became slang for “something you can do to make things easier/simpler/better.”

So be it, then.  In the spirit of openness (in which I score extremely high in personality tests), here are seven “hacks” for a happier life:

  1. Spend at least 15 minutes a day sitting in silence. For me, it is prayer time. This is a powerful early-day practice. If you are religious, this is a good time to sit with Scripture, a devotional book if you use one, and a small notebook in which to write a brief response as part of your prayer. For some people of faith, opening with a short Scripture reading and sitting silently in a contemplative mode of prayer is better.

If you are not religious, use it as quiet meditation time, focusing on breathing in a way that feeds relaxation and focus.

Why it works:  The research on the benefits of such a meditative practice is robust: brain health, heart health, reduced depression and anxiety symptoms. For people of faith, it becomes an opportunity to listen and reflect on God’s presence in their lives and how they are called to live. Taking a few moments to formulate your thoughts and write to God can help anchor you into the experience. The act of writing – words of gratitude, questions, fears – helps with focus and invites you to be in dialogue.

  • Go on a news fast.  If something horrible that actually requires your attention happens or is imminent, like a hurricane or other disaster, you’ll find out about it. Otherwise, just skip the news for a week, or two, or more. Then titrate your dosage:  15 minutes a day, checking into two or three varied sources.

Why it works:  repeated exposure to what are often the same events, or people discussing those events, has the neurological effect of repeated distressing experiences and amplifies your stress level. By quickly reading, rather than watching and listening, you will be better able to glean information without being overly stimulated emotionally.

  • Once a week, avoid all electronics except:
    • Live interaction with loved ones at a distance
    • Shared experiences with family or friends such as watching a movie together, which you can then discuss over a meal.

Why it works:  you will necessarily be spending more time in the real world, either resting, being creative, or otherwise having your life rather than passively observing others’ lives.

  • Go outdoors every day, preferably in the morning.

Why it works:  Morning daylight helps with brain chemistry; it contributes to a better mood and improved sleep by getting your melatonin system set properly.  It is also a good time of day to get your beneficial Vitamin D exposure (check with your physician) and to take in the benefits of exposure to nature: the sky, the sights, sounds and smells of plants, the sight and sounds of animals.

  • Clean up your diet.  Experiment with giving up highly processed junk foods. If you are a “one toe in the water” type, pick one change at a time and stick with it. Add a small change a week. If you are a “cannonball into the pool” type, go all in: get rid of the chips, the fast foods, the super-sweetened snacks.  See how you feel after a couple of weeks, after the worst of the withdrawal has passed and your tastebuds start to recover.

Why it works:  junk food is addictive, hijacking your dopamine system; it leads to erratic moods both because of the direct up and down of dopamine and the very complex relationship between the gut and the brain. The research here is abundant and easy to find; simply put, you’ll feel better. Your energy level should be more stable, helping you feel more energetic and, without that brain/body overstimulation from processed snacks in the evening, you may even sleep better, which leads to number 6:

  • Be religious about sleep.  If you are a 7-hour-a-night person, get those 7 hours; if you are a 9-hour person, get the 9.  Since you will be consuming less electronic media you should be able to squeeze out the time.

Why it works:  Sleep is essential. It is when your brain, and the rest of your body, does a lot of its clean-up and repair work. Your brain uses sleep to sort out information, store memories, and do important work such as using your new, improved, healthier diet to rebuild your stress-and-junk-damaged hippocampi, amygdala, etc.  Try to go to bed and get up at around the same time every day. If you are skeptical, then be scientific about it: do this as a four-week experiment and then assess the outcome.

  • Be committed to a daily exercise routine appropriate to your health requirements.  Your physician can give you info on recommended guidelines and any limitations or considerations you need to bear in mind.  There is no one routine for everyone, but unless you are on doctor’s orders to remain resting and sedentary, there is something you could do in this area. You may have to start slow; you may have to scale back because you are burning out; you may need to add variety so you are addressing cardiovascular health, strength, flexibility and balance.

Why it works:  Well, look at the data!  We are engineered to move, not to sit for hours.  Regular exercise is good for physical and mental health, can help with social well-being for those who exercise with or around others, afford time in nature, and help with sleep and digestion. 

So, there you go.  Seven simple hacks for a happier life.  Most of them cost nothing; even healthier eating could start with a money-saving switch of water in lieu of sugar- or artificially-sweetened prepared beverages. So – all simple, all potentially free. Since it doesn’t cost anything – what’s the harm in giving it a one-month trial run?  If one month of free, simple changes could mean more well-being in multiple areas of life, that seems like a great bargain – cheaper than coming to therapy and paying me, or someone else, to tell you the same thing.

I could tell you, but you’re not going to like it: Anxious Youth

As you know, this column isn’t intended as psychotherapy or professional advice. It’s information and entertainment, and, I hope, the spark for some conversation with someone who can help with a problem. The problem here is anxiety in all its forms.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, about 31.9% of youth have some sort of anxiety disorder.  This would include diagnoses such as generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, panic disorder, and trauma disorders. It’s hard to believe this is accurate; if it is, then as a culture, things have gone horribly wrong. 

We know a lot about what works, and what doesn’t work for anxiety.  Isolation, the vortex of doom the internet can be, the misguided or malevolent support of random strangers online, endless social networking, and a sedentary, sleep-starved, junk-fed existence don’t work.  Overscheduling doesn’t work. Avoidance doesn’t work. Irresponsibility doesn’t work. So do the opposite.

Get off the devices except for schoolwork.

Get enough sleep. Go to bed at a set time, get up at a set time. Every day, even weekends.

Cut down on activities.

Read real books. Learn about other people’s interior lives via good fiction (that’s a primary reason that we read classic literature in school; to understand more about how other people think, feel, and respond to life’s events). Then talk about them. That means parents should read them, too.

Get physical activity.  A healthy young person needs at least two hours of activity a day, and ought to be standing, moving around, and active a big chunk of the rest of the time.  

Learn useful skills.  For example, everything it will take to manage one’s own money, car and home.

Socialize in person, often while doing something purposeful (whether that’s a sport, volunteering, or other activity).

Spend a lot of time in nature. If it can’t happen just about every day, plan a four- or five-hour chunk on the weekend.

Have chores and responsibilities for young people.  No, “school is not their job” and therefore nothing else is to be done around the house. How are they going to learn necessary life skills? Plus, who wants a spouse or roommate who thinks going to work covers them for any contribution to home and family life?

Learn mindfulness meditation skills, to slow down the stress response and “step back” from anxiety-provoking thoughts. This facilitates the cognitive restructuring of cognitive-behavioral therapy, in which new ways of thinking and behaving are identified and rehearsed.

…and try cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), preferably with at least one parent learning, too, to be coach and to help the parent. Anxious parents tend to teach their children fear-fueled ways of thinking and behaving, and anxious parents are apt to facilitate avoidance.  Avoidance is like jet fuel for anxiety. Find a licensed mental health professional who will work with you as a family to teach the skills. Keep in mind that CBT will work much better if the other parts of life are in healthy, working order – proper sleep, nutrition, exercise, etc.

To expand on an earlier point: parents, often your anxiety feeds your child’s anxiety. If you are behaving as if the world is a terrible, dangerous place, do not be surprised if your child responds the same way.  Making changes together to have a healthier, less anxious lifestyle will help the whole family.

My child is “hyperactive” Part 2: Move it!

Post 2 in a series: I COULD TELL YOU, BUT YOU AREN’T GOING TO LIKE IT © 2023

Once again, for purely entertainment purposes, I foray into the world of possible changes to be made to your, and perhaps your child’s, routine to maximize well-being. Be sure to consult a health professional before undertaking new activities.

My child is hyperactive, part 2:  Move it!

I am using “hyperactive” in quotation marks because, over the past 25+ years, many parents have offered this as their diagnosis of their children. When asked to describe the behaviors, they talk about poor attention, disorganization, disobedience, moodiness, lost homework and missing sports equipment, etc. It is this type of description, not the medical diagnosis per se, that I address here.

Human beings are designed to move: to walk, bend, stretch, jump, hop, climb, and more. We are able to throw things, build things, swim, dance, and then, when weary, sit and rest.  Follow a healthy preschooler around for a few hours and you’ll get the idea:  explore, play hard, stop when you’re ready to rest. Modern life seems to have it backwards:  most people’s lives involve a preponderance of sitting and far too little standing and moving. This is unhealthy for most people (of course, some people have serious health limitations) and even worse for healthy children. To expect children to sit still for many hours is a recipe for attention and behavior issues as well as developmental challenges.

My paperwork for new clients includes questions on sleep, exercise, and basic health, because these habits help shape mental health, too. These also can highlight if mental health care needs to be coordinated with their physician due to physical conditions that can impact mental health.  Obviously, we function best when our habits encourage physical and mental well-being.

In my last post, I challenged parents to take a hard look at their family’s sleep habits and work towards healthy changes. Perhaps by now you and your child have been experimenting with getting adequate sleep.  A second step towards a healthier, happier child with better focus, memory and mood is physical activity.  The American Heart Association recommends at least one hour per day of moderate to vigrous physical activity for children and teens. That means running, jumping, playing games, riding a bicycle, dancing, etc. It doesn’t mean a two-hour practice in which they spend 30 minutes on the field and 90 on the bench, waiting their turn.  Ideally, it includes plenty of free interactive play with other children and some with parents. It is this play, which requires physical activity and complex social skills, that enhances brain development the best and prepares children for the increasingly complex world of the workplace.  It includes the kind of rough-and-tumble play children traditionally have had primarily with fathers, in which the father would model how to pause and calm down before things get out of hand. Rough and tumble play without limits becomes “The Lord of the Flies” and grotesque gang violence. Life without play leads to passivity, poor social skills, poor physical health and higher risk for anxiety, depression, insomnia, and loneliness.

If your family pediatrician has cleared your child for physical activity, it is imperative to get moving. Your next task will be to find ways for your child or children to have more unstructured play time with children, and more outdoor activities with you, too. That will seem inconvenient, especially if you have your children overscheduled and accustomed to being moved from place to place and activity to activity, their entire lives carefully curated to keep them under the direct management of adults.

Go to the park and get on the swings, use the jungle gym, the climbing wall, the workout stands around the periphery. You might have to participate at first, just to show them how it’s done.  Take nature walks. Put the phones away; have yours along to take pictures of interesting animals and plants to look up together later, after you’re home.

Like the change to the sleep routine, expect push-back. Be consistent and see what happens. I suspect that, once your child is on a normal sleep schedule for a few weeks, and has adequate active play, you will see some interesting changes in behavior.   As a side benefit, screen time naturally is reduced:  children who are active outdoors and getting enough sleep have less time to be drugged by their screens.

Have fun playing!

Take a Break: A Shabbat Habit

I was asked to give a talk to a women’s faith group about finding peace in this busy, stressful world. The direction I chose was to invite each person to consider how they keep Sabbath. Beyond attending worship, Sabbath includes truly connecting with God, with family and friends, with creation, and a deliberate disconnection from the usual routine of life. Perhaps you don’t practice a religion and feel that some sort of mandatory day of sitting around doing nothing sounds boring and stupid.  “Sitting around doing nothing” is a corruption of what the day of rest was meant to be; think of it as a day to step away from your usual routine and focus on what is most important. If you’re having trouble figuring out what that might be, think about the people you’ve known who were dying, or what you focused on most when you lost someone you love.  The great existential crises of life tend to make some things stunningly clear.

There are entire books written about the importance of Sabbath time, of that weekly stepping back from rushing, overstimulation and noisiness.  This short column is just a little memo, to me as much as to anyone who might happen to read it and could use the reminder.

So why should anyone consistently and deliberately take a break from the routine? Here are a handful of the many reasons.

It gives you time to recuperate from overdoing. My car’s tachometer goes much higher than the engine is meant to run to function well.  It’s the same for us. We are not meant to run at “100%” 24/7.  Taking a step back from overdoing gives your body a chance to begin to recuperate from an overstressed state. A lot of people like to think they do their best work under pressure, but at a certain point, the nervous and endocrine systems will conspire to have you functioning in a way that reduces your access to your logical, analytic brain.  You probably won’t notice it’s happening, but other people will.

It gives you time to begin to take a different perspective.  Much of modern life is designed to keep us distracted and in an artificial sense of urgency.  This interferes with reflection, the deeper thinking about what is going on, where our actions are taking us, and what does and does not really matter. Put another way, it can help you figure out what is important, versus what feels urgent but is not as important.

It gives you time to focus on relationships. Whether it’s online contact with family far away, time for a walk with your loved one, a meal with family or friends, or a ruthless, hours-long game of Monopoly, a Sabbath mindset puts aside clocks and schedules and savors the time with the people we love.

It provides time for play, rest, and creative pursuits. These are all important. They are not accessories, nor does their value derive from their contributions to work performance the rest of the week.  They are part of being human and have inherent value without having to be subordinate to our work roles.

…and I, definitely, and you too, perhaps, are far nicer to be around when there’s been enough rest, fresh air, laughter, and time with people who love us.  Sabbath time helps make us whole.

That wholeness is part of holiness.  People who are too rushed and focused on work, on the “next thing,” on the next ping of an electronic device, are not able to tune into other people, to themselves, or to God.  Doing what people most associate with Sabbath – going to worship services – loses something if I show up with a rushed, preoccupied, “Yeah, okay, but what’s next?” mindset.  We need a break, a prolonged pause that lets what is important float to the surface of our attention.

If you think this sounds crazy…try it anyway.  Try to take one day a week and carve it out as a day set apart. Spend time with the people you love.  Read a book; take a nap, play games or work on a puzzle. Savor the music you’ve diligently collected. Make art. Write a poem. Go for a nature walk. Cook and enjoy a meal together.  Put your devices away except for purposeful connection with people not physically present.  Then try it the next week. Try it for four or five weeks, and see what you find.

Shalom. Peace.

Not So Complicated

I channeled Mary Poppins: resplendent with unwavering decisiveness and spit-spot, lickety-split efficiency, two of us turned the spare-bedroom/storage-room into comfy guest quarters in less than 45 minutes. Easy-peasy…

…because it was not MY spare bedroom. No emotional investment, no weariness at once again facing the task at hand, it was, actually, fun. Change is refreshingly simple when it doesn’t cost you a thing.

When it costs something, change seems complicated and hard, even impossible.

Almost everyone I know has argued, in vain, with newspaper articles, the radio or television newscasts. As if briefly overcome with psychoses, they shout at the television and argue with the radio in their car. (Me, too). Whatever their position – progressive or conservative, libertarian or statist – they are frustrated and amazed, over and over, at officials’ protestations of how hard it is to make change happen.

Everyone has ideas on how to make change happen. Some are terrifying; others are naïve. Many, however, have the ring of common sense, and it makes one wonder, why are these officials, whether elected or snugly sinecured, acting as if everything is so complicated?

There are many different government programs aimed at moving people from one place to another. Why many? Who knows? Could it be simplified? Yes, and probably elegantly. Everyone on Medicare, for whatever reason, use service A; everyone who meets whatever clearly established criteria (such as Medicaid) for need, use service B. Give every participant a chipped card to use, require photo ID (or put it on the card) to be sure the cards don’t turn into underground currency like food stamps sometimes do, and then the details entered into the program (A or B) for that individual will determine: medical taxi, van assistance, reduced or free bus fare? A bright STEM high school senior could write the bulk of the program in a day or so. If you immediately imagined the most complicated possible situations just to pick a fight with me: sure, those exist. If someone needs a wheelchair-accessible van, then that goes into the electronic info on their card; if they merely need a cab for doctor appointments, that’s on the card. As circumstances change, someone in a remote office can input the update. When Mr. X no longer needs a wheelchair van to get to his appointments, his account can (spit-spot, lickety-split) be adjusted to provide for the appropriate transportation benefit. Plus, with GPS it won’t be hard to figure out if the beneficiary had the cab drop them at Dr. K’s or at K-Mart: auditing for abuse becomes simple. Ta-da: not easy, but simple.

If the object was to make sure poor people had good quality healthcare, one might wonder, why not simply work with what we have? One, we have a public health department system and two, we have a VA system to serve as a model for comprehensive (albeit labyrinthine) healthcare. What makes it so complicated to appropriately expand the one, based on what we know from the other? Doctors are leaving, or not going into, private practice and instead signing on as employees in the private sector, so a nice government job with benefits and a pension seems like a tempting offer for many D.O.s, MDs, ARNPs, RNs, dentists, and other healthcare providers angling to be someone’s employee. Yes, we’d need more buildings and more staff, and probably some specialty services would be outsourced (the VA knows all about that, too). Who uses them? How about anyone who meets criteria for transportation assistance, as above? They already have the ID card; add that info. Outsourcing so little of it will lead to much less fraud, the latter a cause of handwringing for the same politicians who resist change.

Oh, I know. I can’t possibly understand. It’s far more complicated than that. Well, no, it’s not. It’s not going to be easy, but that is not the same as complicated. From out here, it is very clear that sometimes what is explained as “complicated” really means “not easy.” These are different things.

A marathon is not complicated. It is a matter of stepping forward and repeating that action for 26.2 miles. I know; I ran 79 of them. They were not easy. They were simple and hard. So are lots of things. It is just easier to see “simple and hard” from the outside than from the inside.

“Complicated” is a euphemism for something along the lines of, “Well, we don’t want to change anything; some people will be unhappy, and maybe we’ll lose some votes, so somehow we must give the appearance of changing things without actually changing anything.” The best we seem to get sometimes is the legislative version of buying storage containers during the January sales. It’s the same pile of junk, but it’s temporarily neat. If the object is to pretend to change, then, yes, everything we shout at the newspaper and radio about is quite complicated. I have no idea how to run AND not run at the same time, so how could a bunch of bureaucrats figure out how to simplify programs while simultaneously avoiding any changes?

Our ambivalent relationship with change makes it simple, and enjoyable, to help other people organize their stuff. The books were not MY books, the stuff was not MY stuff. People who have enough money and stuff hire people to come in and bully them into getting rid of stuff. The theory is that someone else, who is not emotionally invested, will be able to confront me. I can imagine the process:

Professional organizer: “Now, Lori, how many CS Lewis books do you really need?”

Me: “I dunno. How many ARE there? Ought I leave room for more?”

It goes downhill from there.

The analogy ought to fail because the people we elect should not be emotionally attached to ineffective programs. They behave like people suffering the deep heartache that leads to hoarding behavior, but I suspect the attachment is less suffering and more sinister: each entanglement serves a gratifying purpose or two.

Imagine members of Congress clinging, weeping, to the thousands of pages of regulations that describe the several programs to provide fuel (or rather, money for fuel) to poor people in winter. Why would they fret about merging these into one, clear, program? Where is the burning enthusiasm to ensure that the funds to help people stay warm are used prudently and effectively? I don’t want to read about one person collecting fuel benefits from multiple funds and using some of it for frills, while someone else freezes to death. I want everyone to be warm and cozy. If there were one program, would people find a way to abuse it? Surely; but simplicity reduces the camouflage.

I suspect we will all be shouting at the news for a long time. Meanwhile, I have to go pretend to be someone else so that I can impose some order on my stuff: a process that will be simple and hard.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

© 2017

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.