Tag Archives: change

Stress…And a Lesson From Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi) helps people with insomnia via examining and, where appropriate, helping them change their behaviors and thoughts surrounding the issue of sleep.  One important factor we explore are called “Sleep Safety Behaviors.” These are habits which people believe are helpful for sleep.  Some sleep safety behaviors are in fact very helpful, such as avoiding screens for a couple of hours before bedtime, using soft, warm light sources in the evening, and avoiding upsetting discussions before bedtime. Other sleep safety behaviors are counter-productive, but if a person is convinced that they are helpful the anxiety around giving them up ends up disrupting the process of falling or staying asleep. The objective is to have positive habits around sleep, not unhelpful sleep safety behaviors. It is not as easy or obvious as it might sound.

For example, many people use alcohol as a type of sleep safety behavior. They believe it helps them relax and unwind, and seem to either not know, or disregard, that it actually is a sleep disruptor. Alcohol-fueled sleep usually involves waking up in the middle of the night as the effects of alcohol wear off. It also disrupts the quality of sleep. However, the person convinced that they “need” a drink to sleep may become so anxious about going without the drink that they have difficulty falling asleep, which they attribute (wrongly) to the absence of alcohol.

In the same way, don’t most people have some sort of “stress safety behaviors” to cope with stressful situations or extended times of stress? Some are helpful and constructive, and others are terribly unhelpful and even destructive.  Some are fairly neutral until taken to excess; an ounce or so of chocolate as a snack is one thing; a pound is another. Odds are, you know someone who clings to a stress safety behavior even though it is clear as day that it is unhelpful and even harmful. You may have encountered the futility of trying to convince the person that the extra drinks, the avoidance, the angry outbursts to vent over and over, merely get in the way.

Imagine a person for whom life has delivered a set of one-two punches – illness, a hurricane or two, unexpected car repairs. There are all sorts of paperwork and bills to tackle, and after a long day of work it is all too much. He takes an evening off to binge watch a favorite series, and then, the next day, everything is one more day behind, one more day piled up, and even more overwhelming – too much to be tackled, again, after a long and wearying day. Surely there is a half a season or so of something that will distract from the looming piles of paper.

Perhaps the person doesn’t binge-watch. Perhaps she enjoys a glass of wine, or two, or three, or, heck, why leave only one glass in the bottle? She adds poor sleep and the three days it takes for the full effect of alcohol to leave the brain to the problems still piling up on the table. Perhaps he gets caught up in a vortex of videos about things he cannot afford – certainly not at this moment – and adds envy and resentment to the problems at hand.

Odds are, too, you know people who have some good “stress safety behaviors.” Those habits reinforce resilience. You might notice some people seem to surf through the ups and downs of stressful times without falling apart or adding to the trouble at hand. If you are that someone, that’s wonderful; stick with it. If you know some people like that, but are not one yourself, perhaps you might give some positive stress safety behaviors a try.

If I were making an official list of Stress Safety Behaviors (which I am not at the moment), I’d probably include these:

Sleep: getting regular and adequate sleep – not feast or famine approaches to the weekly rotation, where you pretend you can “get by” on four hours during the workweek and really make it all up to your brain with a long sleep on Saturday.

Move regularly and adequately. Exercise, appropriate to your overall health and physician’s guidance, is essential. The machine needs regular movement to function properly.

Limit exposure to negative influences. Don’t feed your envy, your insecurities, or your bad habits.

Minimize exposure to media and people that encourage you to compare yourself to other people.  Do you think it’s a coincidence that so many magazines and websites feature articles about improving oneself – and a surfeit of advertisements for products that will, in theory, improve those things?

Treat Sabbath time seriously. Set aside one day each week for renewal. Pray, rest, read, enjoy time with family and friends, play, create.

Journal. There are lots of ways to journal. There’s the quick “5 things you’re grateful for” at bedtime journal. There are prayer journals and journals that are brief paragraphs on the events of the day. Maybe it’s that annoying journal assignment your therapist gave you. The act of writing – more than just “thinking about it” – brings more of your brain into the process. This way, for example, you benefit more from noticing good moments during the day, recollecting them in the evening, writing them down, and seeing your words on the page.

Positive stress safety behaviors are simple, common sense…but they can appear to be just one more thing to keep you from getting things done. If you think, for example, that a short walk is just a waste of time, that you’d be better off using those fifteen minutes for the big mess at hand, well, that might be true if that were, in fact, what would happen. But if the thing that would actually happen was a big sigh or a venting of angry frustration and the welcome distraction of a text message from a friend – well, then, the short walk to breathe deeply, move quickly and focus yourself for action might be less of a time-waster than it seemed.

If you’ve taken a look at the task manager window on your computer, you know there are dozens of programs running even though you may be only engaged in one. Start clicking on random programs to turn them off and watch the warnings pop up that this will interfere with the proper functioning of the computer. It’s the same with these sleep and stress safety behaviors. The people who do these things do them consistently, even when things are smooth and rolling along just fine.  These habits operate like a background program, always running. They keep the system working properly but without a big fuss. Turn off, or pause, those background programs and the system stops working properly, or perhaps just shuts down entirely.

Even good programs need updates. Taking that weekly break gives you a chance to notice if you need to make changes to the routine. Ignoring necessary updates usually makes the whole system a bit glitchy.

An Alcohol Dilemma

Alcohol can be a touchy subject. Addictions, generally, are frequently considered to be only something other addicts, including those in recovery, can help with.  Someone like me, who never drank regularly and now, since surgery a few years ago that included a bad anesthesia reaction, can’t drink any alcohol except, oddly, 3 or 4 ounces of Guinness on a couple of holidays each year, is automatically considered ineligible to be helpful. Despite my ineligible status, in a previous post, I included the life lesson that, for many, alcohol is not a friend.

This assertion flies in the face of much research, perhaps most famously Blue Zones data, which includes moderate alcohol use as a generally positive factor for long life. On the other hand, avoiding alcohol is well-supported by substantial research in the medical field.  Shake or stir in my non-drinker status and, well, it seems like I am a fun-killing fuddy-duddy looking for an excuse to ruin my clients’ good time.

What are the benefits of alcohol? Much research has focused in particular on resveratrol and relaxation.  There ways to get antioxidants and relaxation that don’t carry the risks of cancer, liver and brain damage, and some of the regrettable behaviors that alcohol can carry along. This might be a worthwhile topic of discussion with your healthcare provider. Eating grapes, prayer and meditation, physical activity and laughing might hit all the right keys on this.

If you are misusing alcohol – relying on it to “unwind” after the day, to “help you sleep” (it doesn’t, actually), or to get through social situations (there are ways to deal with social anxiety that don’t interfere with functioning) – please seek help. Other signs your relationship with alcohol is unhealthy? Using more than the recommended amount – 1 serving max per day for females, 2 for males. Feeling anxious if you run out, or worrying you will run out. If you worried more about stocking up with booze than water, batteries and nonperishable food for the past two hurricanes, that’s a bad sign, too. Any binge drinking is a danger sign. Binge drinking raises your blood alcohol to .08 in two hours or less, usually four or five single drinks. Any changes in your functioning at home, work, or socially are likewise danger signs. Pretending that these signs don’t apply to you is itself a sign.

Where to go for help?  Go to an AA meeting. Call a therapist. Call 866-210-1303, or 211, or another helpline. See your physician. Tell someone you trust you’re ready to make a change. Just take that first bold step towards help. There are good people eager to help you change the course of your life for the better, preferably before it becomes unmanageable.  

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.

The Best Years

When I was in high school, many adults told me I ought to really enjoy those years because they were “the best years of [my] life.”

Well, for me, high school itself was not, overall, such a great time, and having a bunch of grownups assert that it would turn out to be so was not encouraging at all. From where I am now, I feel sorry for a lot of those adults, because if that was their experience, they must have had pretty miserable adult lives.

Very often, we’ve adopted the idea that some certain time comprises the “best years of life.”  Consider the people who postpone marriage and family because they believe that their 20’s are “the best years of life” and they want to be “free” to travel/build a career/be self-indulgent/whatever.  Some of them will regret later that they did not make different choices (ask any therapist, priest, minister or rabbi).

On the other hand, some of us have our lives unfold in a different order: responsibility precedes higher education, and career-building comes largely after active-duty parenting. What, in the long haul, did I “miss out” on? Not a thing, and this was clear all along the way because I refused to take the bait on some certain time being “the best years” as if it were a prize category.

How about framing things up this way: each period of life is the “best” for what it is meant to be. As it says in Ecclesiastes, 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in His time.”  And in its time, too.  There are some things that our 20s tend to be best for; and for some things, our 40s, 50s, 60s.  Yes, biologically, the 20s are peak time for having babies, and yes, forms of learning that require sheer memorization are best pursued prior to the 40s.  High-level analysis and wisdom, on the other hand, peak later than memorization and keep rolling, usually long after we start fumbling for the reading glasses we put down someplace and then find on our head.

There are different challenges, joys, and heartaches all along the way. Fortunately, our priorities change, or ought to. For God’s sake, who wants to be over 50 and as terrified of other people’s opinions as the typical 15-year-old? 

Are you tempted to feel discouraged? Does it feel as if all doors are shut because some events, some struggles, or perhaps your own regrettable choices, have meant you have lost a chance at the “best years”? Please reconsider. Make a different set of choices or just one different choice today. Then, perhaps, unexpectedly “best” years start today. You probably won’t be able to tell right away. Usually, we only see this when there’s enough distance to look back at today, tomorrow and the next day.

Why am I still here?

“Why am I still here?”

I hear that a lot. Perhaps you do, too.  The veteran who survived a firefight that took his friends; the person who woke up in the hospital to find they were the only survivor of a car crash that took their family; a survivor of a natural disaster that took many lives.  Many adults, perhaps most, have had such an existential episode. I’ve been in car accidents that could have killed me; survived acts of violence that could just as easily have tipped over into lethality, lived through serious illness. None of those are particularly unusual, and only mentioned to underscore the point.

“What do I live for now? What ought I be doing?”

That’s a tough one, yet it is the question every believer is tasked with as the subtext of life every day.  There is some chatter among the media that presuming that one’s survival is in God’s hands is some sort of unusual perspective. It is not my intention to speculate on any particular person’s interpretation of what that means. For those who find it perplexing, I hope to offer at least this Christian’s perspective. God never wants evil; it takes our free will for that to happen. Many of us wrestle with trying to figure out why God allows bad things to happen. Allowing something is not the same as wanting something, that’s for sure; every parent has to learn that lesson, fairly early on.

You may want your toddler to go to sleep. You may want that very, very, very eyes-burning-with-exhaustion much. But you have to allow the reality that the toddler will keep on singing songs, or whining, or coming out to complain. (If you do anything to “make” a child sleep, whatever adult is aware of it is required to report that to child protective services). C.S. Lewis does a much better job of explaining this particular point.  God, of course, chooses to allow or not. I’m not going to understand why because I am not God. God creates everything and I can do not a thing, even catch a breath, unless God wills it.

Our job is to figure out what God wants from us in each emerging situation, whether the situation itself was His will or not. For believers, every breath is a gift; there is no guarantee of another. Pondering what we are to do with these circumstances and assuming God has a preference in terms of our choice of action is not a big stretch.

So, for a Christian, God did not want Corey Comperatore to die in gunfire, protecting his family. It was not God’s will for the gunman to shoot. Mr. Comperatore clearly discerned his purpose was to protect at all costs. He had, apparently, discerned this over and over until his reflex towards self-sacrifice looked “automatic.” That seems to be a sign that his formation into the nature of Jesus Christ, the nature of complete self-giving, was something he had truly embraced.

And now, everyone left behind must discern what God asks of them in this new, tragic circumstance. Over the course of years and months, his family will each have to discern how to restructure life and find a different path forward. Friends and neighbors will need to discern, ongoing, how to provide friendship and support when the months pass and the spotlight of media attention fades.

The question doesn’t necessitate a tragedy, such as an accident, tornado or an attempted assassination. It is a perennial question: every person mourning infertility, every widow, widower, and bereaved parent.  Adolescents are supposed to wrestle with it; the elderly are, too. And all along the way, it is the question every thinking person ponders when transitioning to a new stage of life. We ask it at those times, too, that are both joyful and sad; a child grows up and successfully leaves the nest: mission accomplished; but what is my purpose now? Retirement comes; well, then what? What is your purpose now, beyond a vague sense of perpetual recess?

Being Christian means striving to be conformed to the nature of Jesus Christ. That means seeking not just to avoid being “bad” but attempting to do God’s will in every situation.  Is it “bad” to spend an entire lazy weekend afternoon with a pot of tea, a good book and a handful of chocolate? Especially on the Sabbath? No, lemon ginger tea and Lady Gregory’s book of Irish folklore, edited by W.B. Yeats, don’t make the list of “do-nots,” but the entire afternoon? When a friend needs a caring ear or a letter? When a nagging thought keeps intruding with that starts with, “I really need to reach out to…” maybe the “not a bad thing” needs to step aside and yield to the “better thing,” a “because” for the moment.

And, when you’re wrestling with the big questions of life, the little “becauses” become a path through the dark places.

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?

Why Ask Me That? Third in a series on questions in the therapy room

Someone who is struggling with anxiety just wants to feel better. It’s understandable; anxiety feels awful. The physical symptoms, so often hovering just below full-blown fight-or-flight; a mind that won’t rest, a brain that hops from topic to topic like a rabbit in a vegetable garden. Add to this the fear that so many people have when they come to therapy:  will the therapist tell me I’m crazy?

No; no, I won’t tell you that, but I am probably going to annoy you with a lot of questions that may seem to be irrelevant to your suffering. My paperwork asks about your history, decade by decade; your losses; job satisfaction; health issues; your alcohol and drug use; your prescribed medications; your exercise and sleep patterns. I ask about screen time, social memberships, supportive relationships. I ask a lot of questions, and I can tell who thinks those questions are irrelevant by who leaves them unanswered, handing me incomplete paperwork and acting surprised when I follow up on the many blank places.

All these questions are important, and here’s a short discussion on just a few aspects and the explanation.

Your sleep patterns, and any difficulties, can both contribute to, and be worsened by, anxiety, stress and depression. If you need more, or better sleep (and most people do), figuring some ways to improve your quality and quantity of sleep can help across many categories of your life: focus, memory, energy, stress level, and mood. When these improve, relationships can often improve, as you might expect when you can pay attention and be less cranky.

If you have major health conditions that are not properly managed, these may contribute to problems with sleep, anxiety, or mood. For example, poorly managed diabetes, besides being physically very dangerous, impacts focus and mood. I would refer you to your physician to see if there are problems that require medical attention.

Social isolation is a recipe for loneliness and depression. Social media use tends to make this worse – something that seems weirdly contradictory. Lonely people eventually withdraw, and this creates more loneliness, isolation and possibly anxiety and depression. We need to explore ways to enter back into activities with others.  From my guidance counselor days: children who are isolated suffer. If you ask a child if s/he has friends, and then ask him/her to name those friends, and there is a flash of hesitation, you know you are dealing with a child suffering social isolation. Just so, adults who cannot identify some supportive relationships and what is good about those relationships is an adult who is emotionally isolated.

I ask questions that make sense to me; if they don’t make sense to you, please ask why I’m asking. Thanks!

Why Ask Me That? Part 1 of a Series on Questions in the Therapy Room

“It’s a lot of paperwork.” 

Yes, I agree, it is. And all that information is helpful and useful for me in what I presume is a shared project: making positive change in some aspect – or many aspects – of that client’s life. 

The number of people who simply skip sections, as if they were optional, or not relevant, is significant. This gives the opportunity to have some conversations about those questions, and their relevance.

For example:

If someone routinely shortchanges their sleep, health problems will develop. In the short term, irritability (which tends to mess up personal and work relationships), less efficient short-term memory (ditto), distractibility (ditto) and impulsivity (mega-ditto) are possible contributors to whatever the primary complaint may be.  So maybe we should address that, too!

If you are extremely extroverted and are working remotely and living alone, you have created a perfect petri dish for restlessness, depression, and dissatisfaction. Those are psychological and emotional factors that create problems across domains. Deliberately arranging adequate real interactions with others will be essential to meeting that basic need.

If you don’t have five or six people who you can identify as part of your social support system, such as friends, family, a mentoring colleague, etc., there may be a heightened risk for depression and anxiety.  That doesn’t mean you confide personal problems with all those folks; you might have someone who provides support and encouragement in career-related areas, some people you can pray with, people who you play sports or exercise with and enjoy lighter conversations.

There are no questions on my paperwork that are not rooted in helping the client and me have a grounded understanding of the client’s strengths, struggles, and emotional resources for making positive change. Just ask me.

Detour Ahead. There. And there.

Look carefully. Yep, that’s a detour sign, pointing to the right at the T-intersection. And yes, across the street is another detour sign, pointing left. There are, as it happens, only two ways to choose here – right or left. Both appear to be detours. To where? From where?

A quarter-mile away, the road crews who neglected to pack up these signs (months have passed) also left behind a Detour sign with an arrow pointed up, as in, go straight ahead. That particular sign has been moved back and forth, one day pointed north, then south, and, most recently, either whimsically or horribly, as if the detour was to crash through someone’s side fence into their backyard.

Pity the unsuspecting rideshare driver who has to figure all this out. Eventually, there will be road work in our area again and we’ll all stupidly ignore the first detour signs, because we’ve learned to regard orange signs with arrows as signifying nothing.

There you go: life with crazy detours and places where there seems to be no right answer. At least, there seems to be no easy answer. It can be hard to know if a detour indicates something to be avoided or a relic or even a ruse.

Anyone new to the neighborhood would be stymied by the mixed messages, while the people who know the origin of the dueling detours shrug and ignore them – or, in some cases, get annoyed and move signs across the street.  There’s a clue: when a detour arises, ask questions; see how other people are responding to the apparent detour, and why.  On occasion, I see, in stores, the relics of the social distancing recommendations of 2020, those half-peeled away stickers on terrazzo floors. Like the road-sign-weary denizens of my area, shoppers ignore signs that used to be treated as if they’d come down from Mount Sinai.

There are detours that make sense, like when there’s a big hole in the road. No doubt you’ve gotten your share of detour signs from life. I’ve had mine. Some have kept me from disaster, and some turned out to be less about danger and more about someone else’s fears or agendas.  I’ve heard about many – and about so many people who figured out which detours were legitimate, and which were either relics or ruses.

Wishing you good adventures, and the wisdom to know relics from ruses, as well as to never be the person who puts up fake detour signs for others.

To Ink or Not to Ink

To ink or not to ink: that is the question.

Not my question, but a lot of people debate this. Perhaps they are considering the latest news: the research showing a significant increase in the risk of blood cancers with just one tattoo. That seems worth attention.

Sometimes, people planning a tattoo want to talk about it, the image and the expected arguments from friends or family. We might discuss the option of wearing a piece of jewelry with the same design for a year straight – no exceptions – or the benefit of a trial run with temporary tattoos for a few months.  Perhaps pulling out a particularly unflattering photo, with a hairstyle and clothing you thought looked great at the time, and facing it every day for a year or so would provide a tap to the brakes. Most often in these conversations, I simply listen, ask a lot of questions, and offer my personal explanation as to “why not.” There are three significant reasons.

On my phone, I have a photo of memorial bricks that rest in Europe, with the names and deportation dates of family members who died in Auschwitz in 1944.  They would have been tattooed by the Nazis, each with a unique number, for the obsessive record-keeping for which the Third Reich was known. Out of respect to their memories, no ink.

I can’t think of any sort of decoration I wouldn’t tire of, sooner, probably, rather than later. A look at my hair and fashion choices in old photos makes that spectacularly clear. Due to the likelihood that I will someday find my décor of the day regrettable, no ink.

Finally, the two most significant factors in my life, my faith and my marriage, are too important to me for tattoos. Both deserve a deliberate, mindful choice – every day, every moment. The crucifix I wear is by choice, never mindlessly or without reverence for its meaning and the demand placed upon me, however poorly I may live out that demand. The wedding ring is deliberate, a clear statement of, I love you, I choose you, each day. Never indifferent, never nonchalant: to wear these things is a daily action verb.

Now, those reasons may make no sense to you. Maybe they seem silly or irrelevant to your situation. Perhaps they do; but perhaps they are worth a conversation with someone as you, or they, make decisions about permanent records of this particular spot in place and time.