Insults Amongst Friends: Why We Do It

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date June 29, 2015
7 Comments on Insults Amongst Friends: Why We Do It

Three men laughing --- Image by © Mario Castello/Corbis

A group of my male friends and I get together about once a month to play a little poker. Because my wife and I did some traveling last winter, I happened to miss a couple of these fun events. Upon my return, I was notified of when the next poker night would occur. As I arrived, one of my buddies, noticing my entrance, cried out, “Oh no, Jeff’s back!” On the heals of this comment came a chorus of moans, sprinkled with laughter. Accompaning all of this were some warm handshakes and pats on the back.

Mike Gilmartin, a fellow player, always writes up a little summary of the evening events. To give you a little flavor of how, upon my return, the rest of the evening went, I thought I would share with you his summary. I edited out some of it because unless you know the backstories of our relationships, you would have no idea what he was referring to. Here’s what is left:

THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER: YEAR 17, ROUND 6

First hand won: Unbeatable golf partners, Stevie Wonder & Mike, split the pot.

Last hand (showdown) won: Mike’s artfully constructed full-house is bulldozed by Gordie’s wild card-tainted straight flush.

Best beat: Steve’s four kings put a whuppin’ on Almont’s four jacks in Bowling for Dollars….

Psychology major at work moment; In order to break his poker losing streak, Almont walks around the table three times, clicks his heels, and voila, starts winning.

Pie in the sky moment: Woody delivers two, count ’em, two pies for the game. When he is out of the room, there is talk of chipping in to buy him a frilly apron for next season’s games. Gordie will check with Nancy [Woody’s wife] to see if Woody favors gingham or polka dots.

Now we’re wondering why we missed him moment: Jeff’s return to the poker table reminds one and all that incoherence, forgetfulness, and ineptness are not all that admirable….

Thanks to all for playing.

A couple of weeks ago, I first brought up this topic of friends insulting one another (see post titled “Insults Amongst Friends“). There, in an effort to give you a sense of how this tends to get played out, I described some of the events that transpired when my friends and I recently went on a baseball trip. Today’s post is focussed on explaining why we do insult one another.

Why Friends Playfully Insult Each Other

One answer that quickly comes to mind is that it’s fun. The insults often lead to laughter, and laughter is typically a pleasant experience. If we do something that leads to a pleasant feeling, we tend to do similar acts in the future in the hope that it will again lead to pleasant feelings.

But this answer begs the question, why do insults among friends lead to laughter? Mike, the writer of the poker night summary I shared above, when asked this question, said that it is actually a way to say to your buddies that you like them without being mawkish about it.

His comment reminded me of a number of comedy roasts that are readily available on Youtube. If you’ve watched any of them, no doubt you’ve noticed that the person being roasted is actually the person being honored. Nevertheless, they are subjected to a barrage of insults most of the time, although there are, toward the end of a series of insults by each presenter, a sentence or two of heartwarming praise.

Mike, when I discussed this with him, added that, “Our friends, rather than feel bad because I insult them in my summary write-up, are more likely to actually feel bad if I accidentally forget to insult them. The insults are a way that brings us all together under the banner that “No shame is too great to bear.”

Although there is much truth to Mike’s take on this, I think there is a little more going on. In my view, most of the time that we laugh it’s because something reminds us of a shameful experience which touches a set of nerves even before we have time to think more fully about what is actually going on. Upon realizing we are among friends who all have had to undergo a shameful experience or two, it unites us in this common experience and we are relieved that this is being shared with those whom we are confident like us despite our very real shortcomings. It is this sense of relief that is expressed as laughter.

And our laughter serves as well as a special form of communication. When someone tries out a friendly insult, there is a very brief moment when the insulter and those listening in are not quite sure that the insulted party will take the kidding as a real insult intended to make someone actually feel awful. Doing something that leads to a friend feeling awful would be experienced as shame. When the target of the playful insult laughs, there is a sense of relief that the playful insult has been taken in a pleasant way, and it is this relief that is expressed as shared laughter among friends.

Laughter is believed to be instinctual because even people who are born blind and deaf still laugh. And those who study the connection of our brains and laughter have found that it begins by triggering some action in the oldest part of the brain, a part of the brain that came about when language and thinking development was at its most rudimentary stage. And so we are provoked to laugh at times even when we are not sure why we are doing it.

Robert R. Provine, is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Professor Provine conducted a number of studies of laughter and authored the book Laughter: a Scientific Investigation. One of his studies was a survey of laughter. He and some graduate students listened in on average conversations in public places and made notes. And in a survey of 1,200 “laugh episodes,” he found that only 10%-20% of laughs were generated by anything resembling a joke.

The other 80%-90% of comments that received a laugh were dull non-witticisms. For example, people often begin to laugh as they start to leave some people after a period during which they were all interacting and they began to say such things like, “I’ll see you guys later” and “It was nice meeting you.” Why would people be prone to laugh then?

Well, it seems to me that just as we are departing from an interaction with others, we may have deep down in the emotional center of our brains, some concern that our interactions might have come off as negative or even shameful. As we begin to observe the behavior of the other parties that were involved in the interaction, some may be perceived as indicating that things had gone well. Comments like, “Gee, this was really fun,” or “Let’s get together again real soon,” are monitored carefully to see if they are perceived as sincere. At such times, sometimes we begin to experience at some deep level of our emotional brain that some of these comments do indeed appear to be sincere, and a sense of relief is experienced. These perceived reliefs are expressed as laughter, or nervous laughter, as they are sometimes referred to.

Our laughter then communicates to others that at least someone enjoyed the interactions, and there is some relief experienced by the other parties concerned about how their own interactions were perceived, and the laughter spreads.

There is a similar phenomenon going on when we are amongst friends. When our friends point out our shortcomings, the emotional part of our brain begins to become concerned. The relief that we experience a fraction of a second later because we realize we are among people whom we have some good reason to believe like us despite our shortcoming is expressed as laughter. There is then some additional relief experienced by others from the sound of the insulted parties laugh and the laughter spreads.

Now, I hasten to point out that I have among my close friends, two guys who don’t take well to playful insults. Consequently, my friends and I largely respect this characteristic of them by avoiding throwing any barbed comments their way. Why make a friend feel bad just because the rest of us enjoy this fun form of interacting. So I urge you to keep this in mind. Consider keeping an eye out for those individuals. Some of them might laugh just out of concern that the rest of us might think less of them if they let on that they can’t take a playful joke, but inside they might be cringing. You can usually pick up who feels this way by the nature of their laugh, which typically is more halfhearted than typical. Sometimes they get obviously annoyed and defensive.

And if I might offer one more suggestion in this regard, consider the comedic roasting of an honored guest we see from time to time on TV. Just like those doing the roasting take a little time after the friendly insults to say some kind words, you might be wise to do likewise.

Well, that’s my post for this week. Until next time, may you all have some fun without hurting anyone’s feelings.

My Best,
Jeff

———————————
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags laughter, laughter and friends, shame

Brooklyn bullying conflict resolution insults interpersonal conflicts intrapersonal conflicts levity playful teasing

On Brooklyn Wisdom for Responding to Insults

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date June 22, 2015
No Comments on On Brooklyn Wisdom for Responding to Insults

When his father lost his job because of a serious illness, John qualified for a free lunch pass at school. The first time John showed the cashier at the school’s lunch line his pass, Fred, a husky boy standing behind John, started to laugh and cry out to others, “Hey guys, get a load of this! John has a free lunch pass. What’s the matter, John, your parents can’t afford to buy you lunch.”

“That will be enough of that, Fred!” scolded the cashier. At that same moment, John turned to Fred and hollered, “Shut your big mouth, you fat pig!” Both boys started swinging at each other, and it took three school officials to pull them apart.

Insults and The Wisdom Of My Youth

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, I, along with everyone I knew, had to deal with insults, and this was not always an easy task. The entire body of wisdom that I received on how to handle these types of experiences basically amounted to a mere three sentences:

1. “If people throw an insult at you, throw an insult right back at them.”

2. “If throwing insults back at the insulter doesn’t shut them up, slug them right in the kisser, that’ll teach them to keep their big mouth shut!”

3. “You should just ignore insults.”

Despite these words of advice, I found that when those that I knew and I had insults thrown at us, often a great deal of strong emotions would arise, and the way we handled these situations often left behind an uncomfortable, often bitter, state of affairs.

Difficulty Dealing With Insults Extends Far Beyond Brooklyn’s Borders

As years went by, I found that difficulty dealing with insults was not just something that occurred in Brooklyn; it was actually a problem area for many throughout the world.

As I began to study psychology at the University of Minnesota, I found that many individuals who seek mental health services because of concerns around feelings of depression often are spending a great amount of time insulting themselves. A major reason that they do this is that they know people who are treating them disrespectfully, or when they were younger, someone had treated them in a very disrespectful manner. I also found that violent offenders typically become violent because they perceive that someone had insulted them, the situation escalated and eventually someone was seriously hurt. Now the community was paying millions of dollars to deal with the aftermath.

A Brooklyn Boy Tries to Improve On the Wisdom Of His Youth

As I began my professional career in Rochester, New York, immediately I received referrals from teachers who wanted me to help students who were having difficulty handling insults. I quickly learned that the same three wisdom sentences that I had learned to respond to criticism when I was growing up in Brooklyn were already well known to these students, and despite this, things weren’t going at all well. And so it fell upon me to try to come up with some better ways to deal with these types of problems.

I soon found some approaches that worked rather well. Of course, I always began by making a personal connection with the student by asking what they liked to do. Usually some things that they liked were things I liked as well. Rock music, some of the talented athletes of the day, a TV program or two, would come up, and once our enthusiasm for a few topics were shared, we would get on with working on some new ways to deal with insults. Throughout this process, they would criticize me from time to time, and I sought to model the patterns of behavior I hoped these students would learn.

Before long, I would point out that everyone experiences name calling, insults, and teasing, even the greatest presidents, the most talented athletes, and rock stars. If someone insults you, it does NOT mean that you are a bad person.

I then tell them the story of John and how Fred laughs at him on the lunch line when he uses, for the first time, his free lunch pass. Afterwards, I ask:

“Why do you think Fred laughs at John?”

The typical response is, “It’s because Fred is mean.”

“It may seem that way,” I reply, but think about this for a moment. Comedians have learned that if they pretend to accidentally trip and fall down, people laugh. Why do you think they laugh?”

Typical answer: “It’s just funny.”

Me: “Did you ever laugh when you saw somebody trip and fall?”

Typical answer: “Yeah.”

Me: “Because you’re mean?”

Typical answer: “No.”

Me: Well then, how come?

Typical answer: “It’s just funny.”

Me: “Sometimes it does seem to be funny. But you know why I think people laugh?”

Typical answer: “Why?”

Me: “I think that when people see someone trip and fall, it reminds them of when they, themselves, tripped and fell or messed up in some other embarrassing way. They remember how embarrassing it was, and it is a relief to them to see that they aren’t the only ones who sometimes mess up. It is that relief that they feel that leads to their laugh.

“In that story that I told you about John and Fred, when Fred laughs at John on the lunch line, I think it’s not because he’s being mean. It’s because he recalled that there were times when something embarrassing happened to him. Seeing John use his free lunch pass was a relief to Fred.

“One reason I think this is true is that people who have had the most embarrassing things happen to them are, from my experience, usually the quickest to start to laugh when something embarrassing happens to someone else. They also laugh the loudest, and they are the quickest to tell others of the embarrassing thing that happened to someone else. Do you understand what I mean?”

With this type of discussion, students referred to me very soon get to understand that when someone laughs at you, often it isn’t really because they are being mean to you. Rather, they see that you are similar to them in that you have had to deal with some embarrassing problems, just like them.

Helping students to learn this idea, which takes several reminders in the form of several Cool Steve Stories over several counseling sessions, changes their belief that “people who laugh at me are just being mean.” As they replace that belief with this new idea, their anger is reduced. Thus, it becomes easier to teach them other skills that go way beyond the three-sentence words of wisdom that most people are being taught–skills like how to recognize when laughing at someone begins to go beyond the typical emotional relief that many of us experience when we see someone else do something embarrassing and turns into bullying; and skills like the five levels of maturity for responding to negative criticism (see here and here).

During my professional career I was getting paid to provide advice on these types of interpersonal and intrapersonal problems. Now that I’m comfortably retired, I have a calling to give back something to our communities. So, through my blog, “From Insults to Respect,” I offer, for free, the same advice I used to get paid for. It’s a labor of love.

Conclusion

Let’s conclude today’s post by returning to a situation very similar to the one with which we began. This time, however, thirteen-year old John, had had quite a bit of practice on handling this type of situation with a wise teacher before he met Fred. Now, faced with Fred’s laughter and comment, John chooses to respond on the lunchroom line in a manner that is very different than my Brooklyn upbringing suggested was wise. Let’s take a look at how this might get played out:

Fred, a husky boy standing behind John, starts to laugh and cries out to others, “Hey guys, get a load of this! John has a free lunch pass. What’s the matter, John, your parents can’t afford to buy you lunch?”

John turns to Fred, looks squarely into Fred’s eyes, and says firmly, “You’re right, Fred, right now my parents can’t afford to buy me lunch.”

A couple of the guys laugh. John says to himself, “They’re laughing because embarrassing things happened to them. They’re feeling inside a sense of relief now that they’re seeing something embarrassing happening to someone else.”

Throughout this process, John does experience within himself some embarrassment at what is taking place. As he notices this, from time to time he says to himself, “My feelings are natural and helpful. They will help me to remember this experience, and lead me to try to figure out how I can work toward improving my current situation.

This time there is no bloody, violent fight that has to be broken up by three school personnel. And although John is not happy with his current situation, he is far more comfortable with it knowing that if he is teased about it, he has a set of skills that has the potential to enhance his reputation.

Tags Brooklyn, insults, wisdom

conflict resolution friends insults

Insults Amongst Friends

A few months ago I was going to be a guest on the “Anger 911” radio show. The host of the show, Janet Pfeiffer, is an expert on anger and a TV personality, appearing on such networks as “Fox News,” “CNN,” “ABC News,” “CBS News,” “Lifetime,” and “The 700 Club.”

Since my interview was coming up, I began to think about what I might say. As it happened, I was able to get some fresh material on dealing with insults because that was the week that my male friends and I went on our annual baseball trip. We have been doing this for over twenty years, and it involves going to some professional baseball games over an extended weekend. Amongst ourselves, we throw quite a few insults at each other. It’s all in good fun, for the most part.

For this year’s trip, six of us left Friday afternoon, traveling about three hours south to Reading, Pennsylvania, to see its minor league team in the evening. The next day we drove back up north about an hour to catch the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders play.

The first set of insults that caught my attention was at our breakfast at a Reading diner. The waitress began to take our orders, and the first few were the usual breakfast fare of eggs, toast, and some meat, either sausage or ham. Then it was my turn. As soon as the waitress looked at me, pencil in hand, my friends started to perk up and, one said to her, “Oh no, brace yourself, here comes the nutcase.” Another said to the waitress, “You’re not going to believe this!”

I ordered my usual oatmeal, wholewheat toast, and orange juice, which, to my friends, was hardly proper manly food. One friend cried out, “Did you bring your flax seed oil with you, for crying out loud!” Eyes were rolling, and the laughter, catching. Before long our whole table got a belly load of chuckles out of this line of insults.

A little later, we were walking along the main avenue of Reading, looking at the shops, and one of my friends came over to me. “Jeff,” he said, “I have to say that I love having you join us on our trips because it takes a lot of pressure off of me when it comes to the guys throwing insults around. Before you came with us, I was the main target of insults, and now, I still get plenty, but at least at times the guys are so focussed on insulting you that at least I get a break. It’s amazing that it doesn’t seem to bother you. When it happens with me, it starts to get to me after awhile. How do you manage to always keep so cool about it?”

I replied that, “To me, it’s like water off a duck’s back, and it’s all in good fun.”

But as we continued to walk, I did recall that there was one set of insults that the guys like to throw at me from time to time that does sting a bit. It involves an incident that occurred about 25 years ago. I had taken my infant child, Jack, for a walk in his stroller. He had fallen soundly asleep, and as I passed the local jewelry store, I decided to stop in because it was getting pretty close to my wife’s birthday. After looking at a few items, I decided to give it some thought before making a purchase. My mind was caught up comparing two items in my mind as I began to leave the store, and I completely forgot that my son, who was sleeping silently in the stroller off in the corner of the store, was with me. And so, as I began to leave, someone I knew who happened to also be in the store, noticed I was leaving without my son. “Aren’t you going to take your son with you?” he enquired with a huge smile on his face. Embarrassed, I quickly thanked him and retrieved Jack.

Well, this story got around to all of my friends, and it began to get incredibly exaggerated, so that in one form of the story, I was half a block away from the store without Jack until someone finally ran me down to come and get him. And in yet another form of the story, I was blocks away from the store before someone finally caught up with me.

There is no question that I indeed get caught up in my thoughts and therefore forget what the heck I’m doing somewhat more than average, and so I accept a little teasing about this. But if the truth was told, the story of forgetting my son in the store is something I experience with a little thud in my heart. And so, as I thought about this, I found an increased ability to sympathize with my friend who had, just moments before, shared with me the difficulty he had with some insults, even among his friends.

Later on the trip, I was sitting with another friend in the back of a car, while two other friends were in the the front seats. The driver accidentally went past the left turn he was supposed to have taken, and the guy sitting next to him in the front seat began to throw insults, in a friendly way, at the driver. “Don’t you know how to drive, you putz!”

If it was me getting this line of insults, I would have just replied with something like, “Oops,” and then just laughed along, but the driver, instead, recalled a time when the insulter had made even a bigger mistake driving. “Oh yeah,” he cried, “how about the time we were on the fishing trip and you said you knew the way, and then, after a half hour going in the wrong direction, you finally admitted you had no idea where the hell we were?!!”

The bickering over who had made more driving mistakes over the years continued in the two front seats of the car for quite some time until the guy I was sitting with in the back cried out in exasperation, “You two sound like an old married couple.” With that, the two in the front seat banded together to insult the guy who made the old married couple remark. Although it appeared that it was all in good fun, I wondered if there was some underlying discomfort going on.

The next day, as we were heading home, there was some more insults being thrown around, which seemed to be pleasant enough, but at one point, one guy said, “Let’s cut out the insults for awhile, it’s starting to feel like it’s getting a little old.” The guy who had just before thrown an insult at the guy making the request couldn’t help making one more insulting comment, something like, “What’s the matter, baby, you can’t take a little kidding.” The others present, smiled, and then, for the remainder of the trip, we all switched over to a more supportive mode of treating one another.

Upon reflection, I liked what the guy who asked for a break in the insults had said. He noticed that the insults were beginning to get to him, and he spoke up in a manner that struck me as a respectful tone. And it was great to see my buddies were willing to back off when it became known how at least one of us was beginning to feel.

Tags friends, insults, teasing

Bob Dylan conflict resolution happiness

Bob Dylan On Happiness

Today we’re going to take a look at that treasure of an emotion, happiness. Although I’ve written on this this topic twice before (see “The Desire for Happiness” and “Hope and Happiness as Emotions)” there remains much left to be said.

The topic of happiness is relevant to insults and respect in a variety of ways. For example, if you tell people that your goal of life is to be happy, some may insult you for being shallow and lose a certain amount of respect for you. To Albert Einstein, happiness is perhaps a fitting goal for a herd of cattle. Goals of life that he admired fell under the umbrellas of truth, justice, and beauty.

Similarly, the great sage from Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was not a fan of having happiness as a goal of life as we can readily see from the following quote:

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well.

Why do some people object to having happiness as one’s main goal in life? Well, for some, it conjures up an image of people apparently satisfied with a life of chiefly lying on their couches drinking alcohol, taking pills, and watching as much TV as they can get away with. But there are people who say that their goal of life is happiness, and yet when you observe them, they are hardly shallow individuals, and their life activities don’t in any way match that of the image of couch potatoes. So, perhaps you are beginning to see, there are subtleties to this topic, subtleties which my earlier posts failed to adequately address.

As a fun way to explore further the issues that surround the experience of happiness, let’s utilized Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour show episode on “happiness.” For those of you who would like to hear this delightful and thought provoking episode, it’s available for free on the internet HERE.

Bob’s Introduction to His Happiness Theme

With a stirring upbeat big band sound in the background, Bob opens his show with the following words:

Welcome everybody to Theme Time Radio Hour. It’s good to see so many familiar faces. I stopped off downstairs, got all the latest gossip from Carl’s Barbershop. I see they slapped on a new coat of paint in the lobby of the old Abernathy Building, and I’m happy to say that the coffee at Sampson’s is as strong as it ever was. Yes indeed-ee-doo, I could not be happier to be with you today. Even more so because today’s theme is something the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence guarantees us the pursuit of, along with life and liberty. You guessed it. Stick around for the next hour where we’ll be playing songs all about happiness. I can’t guarantee that I’m gonna make you happy, but I’m gonna do my darndest.

Bob then launches into a swinging song by Hot Lips Page, titled “Feelin’ High and Happy.”

Better slip into your evenin’ clothes,
There’s a dance tonight at Joe’s,
Let’s go, I’m feelin’ high and happy
I’ve reserved a ringside seat for two,
Nothin’ but the best will do,
Let’s go, I’m feelin’ high and happy

As I listened to this song, I began to wonder what is it about going out to listen and to dance to lively music that often leads to feelings of happiness. Upon reflection, it came to me that typically people have desires to get some exercise and to be with some fun people. As these needs are met we begin to feel happy. And yet, as I thought about this a little more, it occurred to me that whenever I’ve gone out dancing, the songs and music are not only upbeat. There’s always some bluesy stuff thrown into the mix.

Even the lively “Feelin’ High and Happy” song has a line in it that reveals some troubles:

I just went into hock for everything,
When I do that it’s so we can swing
You know I’m feelin’ high and happy!

Whether the songs of troubles are about money, loss of love, struggles with drugs, or pretty much anything else, they almost always become part of the night of seeking a good time. Why is that?

I know, for me, the fact that I do have struggles that I’m seeking to overcome makes my life more interesting and meaningful. When I’m reminded of the struggles that I have had to overcome to achieve my desires, I find that it makes the happiness of achieving my desires ever more enjoyable. In fact, I don’t think we could be happy without the struggles that go along with achieving our desires.

Later in Bob’s Show On Happiness

Shortly after the Hot Lips Page song, Bob plays us a little audio clip of the pharmaceutical industry’s style of trying to sell happiness in the form of a pill:

Today, medical science recognizes that some folks aren’t helped by relaxing exercises. Doctors are now prescribing anxiety medicine. It makes those who fear they are about to quit, feel like they are ready to begin, bidding their darken spirits goodbye for the calming spirit of a cloudless sky.

I got the distinct impression Bob’s a bit skeptical of this salesman’s pitch.

Bob’s next song is by the soulful Al Green, “Nothing But Love and Happiness.” It begins,

Love and happiness (yeah)
Something that can make you do wrong
Make you do right
Love and happiness

The lyrics point out that as we seek to fulfill our desire for love there are times when things just don’t always end up on the happiness side of the spectrum. On the other hand, if we do find a love that works the way we might have dreamed was possible, love can make you wanna dance and sing.

In Bob’s next bit, he provides us a philosophical epigram:

Richard Gere told me something the Dali Lama once said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Hmmmm.

And then he introduces another song:

“Here’s Jimmie Heap and the Melody Masters, ‘Then I’ll be Happy.'”

The song begins,

I wanna go where you go,
Do what you do,
Love when you love,
Then I’ll be happy!

I wanna sigh when you sigh,
Cry when you cry,
Smile when you smile,
Then I’ll be happy!

We get a pretty clear sense in this song that there may be a deeper source of happiness that comes from some types of relationships even if it means sharing some tears from time to time. It has a kind, pleasant country feel to it.

Soon, Bob mixes a little philosophy with humor:

“One way to have a happy home is to practice Feng Shui, which in Chinese means wind and water. These are the things that flow naturally. Feng Shui causes us to focus on the qi, which is the energy of life and is incorporated in every part of our life.

“The bedroom is considered the most important room of the house and should have qualities of stillness and softness. You should use pleasing textures. The entrance of the house is also important. This is the transition from the outer world to your domain.

“Feng Shui isn’t just important for humans. The Los Angeles Zoo paid $4500 to a Feng Shui expert to make their monkeys from China feel more at home. I don’t think it was the Feng Shui that made them feel happy. I just think that monkeys just liked the idea that zoo keepers are willing to pay $4500 on them.”

Of the next few songs that Bob plays, the one that made me think most deeply about today’s topic is “Happy” by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins. Some of the lyrics tell us:

They warn you about killers and thieves and knives
I worry about cancer and living right
But my momma never warned me about my own destructive appetite
Or the pitfalls of control
How it locks you in your grave
Looking for someone to be saved under my restraint
So I could be happy
Happy
Oh so happy

The lyrics, I think, remind us that although happiness comes from achieving our goals, some goals, when achieved only make us happy in the short term. In the end we pay too great a price for the fleeting happiness that comes from “destructive” appetites. Of course drug addictions are the most well known of these, but trying to force people to be under your control has its pitfalls as well.

As the Show Winds Down

The last song that Bob plays on his happiness show has a little lesson for us. It’s Happy Trails to You, by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. I really like this verse:

Happy trails to you
Till we meet again
Some trails are happy ones
Others are blue
It’s the way you ride the trail
That counts
Here’s a happy one for you

Then Bob leaves us with a poem called “Happiness” by Jane Kenyon. I think that’s a fine way to end today’s post as well. Enjoy the poem, and I hope you visit From Insults to Respect again real soon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
Or the way it turns up like a prodigal
Who comes back to the dust at your feet
Having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what was lost,
And take from its place the finest garment,
Which you saved for an occasion

You could not imagine, and you weep night and day
To know that you were not abandoned,
That happiness saved its most extreme form
For you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about,
Who flies a single-engine plane
Onto the grassy landing strip,
Hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door
Until he finds you asleep mid-afternoon
As you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom,
To the child whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover,
To the dog chewing a sock,

To the pusher, to the basketmaker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
In the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
To rain falling on the open sea,
To the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Tags Bob Dylan, happiness

conflict resolution Disabilities Emotionally disturbed Intellectualy Disabled Learning Disabilities Mental Retardation Special Eduaction Special Education Labels

Special Education Name Calling: Is It Time to Put a Stop to It?

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date May 31, 2015
2 Comments on Special Education Name Calling: Is It Time to Put a Stop to It?

Today, every child is entitled to a free appropriate public education. If someone, such as an educator or parent, becomes concerned about a child’s progress at school, he or she is obligated to refer the child to the Committee on Special Education (CSE).

The CSE is made up of a multidisciplinary team, the parent, and, if parents want to bring in other people for advice, they are entitled to do so. CSE members, working collaboratively, design an individual evaluation, and then it is carried out at no cost to the student’s parents. Based on this evaluation, the CSE then designs an Individualized Education Program (IEP), that by law, must be carried out. If parents are not satisfied with the plan, or how it is being carried out, they are entitled to extensive due process rights.

I am fully supportive of all that I have just described. However, currently in most school districts, in order for students to receive an IEP, they must be provided a couple of labels. That is, they must first be designated as having a disability, and then the specific disability, such as “learning disability,” “intellectually disabled”, or “emotionally disturbed,” is entered into the child’s school records. Although there are parents, students, and educators who embrace these labels, many find this aspect of the IEP process highly objectionable. For those individuals who do object to the labeling part of the process, why not just eliminate it?

The Argument For Permitting Parents and Students to Opt Out of the Labeling Part of The Process

For quite a few years I was employed as a school psychologist. In that role, I served as a member of my school district’s CSE. During these years, I saw first hand many examples of the labeling process becoming harmful.

In one case, a young teenager had managed to get to high school without any special education services, but now he was having a great deal of difficulty passing some required classes. When he was told that in order to get help he would have to be labeled mentally retarded, he became furious, walked out of school, and we never saw him again.

In other cases, despite full agreement on all other aspects of the IEP, the “emotionally disturbed” label led to anger, increased personnel time and financial school district expense in order to resolve differences over this matter. “Why not just give my child the IEP!?” yelled one parent. “I don’t want anyone putting in my child’s record that she is emotionally disturbed. It’s not right!”

I have seen many examples of the “learning disability” classification causing problems as well. “First of all, I don’t have a disability,” said one young teenager. “I have a learning difference, not a disability. In most areas, I learn fine, and even better than most kids in my classes. I find it hard to read, that’s it! The learning disability label paints too broad a stroke. It makes me look like I have trouble learning everything, which isn’t at all true!”

From time to time I see some of the students who were labeled as having a disability when they had been in school now all grown up. Many are not receiving any disability services, are fully employed, and raising beautiful families. Why did they have to be assigned a disability classification when they were young just so they could get services that helped them succeed? Why not give students a chance to show what they can blossom into before we have to label them in school?

My Recommendations

Phrases in the law such as “Rights Afforded to Students with Disabilities” would be changed to “Rights Afforded to Students with an IEP.” Rather than classifying students, the education system would classify educational concerns. If a teacher was concerned that the child was reading below average, the CSE would design an IEP that would address that concern.

At the CSE, parents would be informed that it is the philosophy of the school district to view each student as an individual. The student’s strengths would be emphasized along with the concern that led to the student being referred to the CSE.

There are a number of school districts that have come pretty close to trying out the approach that I am advocating. The federal law still requires that the student be “viewed” as a person with a disability, but beyond that, no other label is required by these districts. From what I have heard, the students in these school districts are doing as least as well as those still requiring records be littered with all of the standard labels.

Labels are like masks held on by rubber band straps. They hide some of the student’s characteristics. Wearing such masks may serve some purposes, but after awhile they may start to get uncomfortable, particularly around the ears. Let those who want to wear these masks be free to do so, but let those who want to meet us face to face, also be free to do so. This is in the best interest of our students.

——————————-

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags Emotionally Disturbed, Learning Disabilities, Mental Retardation, Special Education, Special Education Labels

conflict resolution emotions happiness Hope positive emotions

Hope and Happiness as Emotions

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date May 24, 2015
5 Comments on Hope and Happiness as Emotions

“What’s happening, Josh?” asks Bob.

“Well, I decided to ask Julie out on a date. Oh, how I’m hoping she’ll say yes! My mind keeps going over and over what I should say when I ask her.”

Two hours later.

“Hi Bob. I just got off the phone with Julie. She said yes! We’re going out on Saturday. I’m so happy!”

“Nice!” Bob replies. “You must feel relieved to get that over with.”

“Well, now my mind is racing on how to plan the night so we have a wonderful time together!”

As in the above, the emotions of “hope” and “happiness” often come up in conversations. If you can learn to speak artfully about them, there is an excellent chance that you may increase the amount of respect people have for your intelligence. Here is one way to think about these emotions that has worked for me over the past several decades.

The DIG Conflict Model’s View of Emotions

In the DIG Conflict Model, there are four basic emotions. The first two, threat and grief, are said to be negative emotions.

The second two basic emotions, hope and happiness, are said to be positive emotions.

Emotions turn our attention from some less important situations to some specific situation that we have appraised at the moment as the highest priority. At the same time, they provide an extra boost of energy so we can deal with the highest priority situation in a manner that may require more than the usual level of effort. The negative emotions help us to deal with situations that people typically view, at least at first appearance, as negative, while positive emotions can help us to deal with situations that people typically view, at least at first appearance, as positive.

In a previous post, I focused in on the negative emotions. Today, our focus is on the positive emotions. Let’s look at a parable to help us better understand the nature of hope and happiness.

The Parable of Santo

Santo is a waiter in Saint Paul and the father of two teenagers. He works the midnight to 10 a.m. shift at Mickey’s all night diner. He has been struggling to support his family with this low paying job.

This morning, after finishing his shift at work, an exhausted Santo drags himself into his car. Hector, one of the diner’s dish washers, slides into the passenger seat. Santo plans to take Hector home first before going on to his own home.

At this moment, Santo’s immediate desires are expressed to Hector as he starts up the car. “All I want right now is to get home and go to sleep.” To achieve these desires, Santo understands that he will have to drive through some modest traffic and make several different turns. There have been some serious accidents along his route, but Santo is not thinking about this danger. He has a set of well practiced skills that have become so automatic that he is fully confident that he can get Hector home, and from there, he can go on and get himself home without much further thought about this.

As soon as Santo pulls his car into traffic, Hector begins to check his cell phone messages. “Wow!” Hector suddenly exclaims, “I got a text message from Rudy Anderson, the owner of Rudy’s Restaurant. Rudy says his day waiter has just quit and he wants to know if you’d be interested in applying for the job!”

“You’re kidding!” yells Santo. “Rudy’s waiters get paid three times what I’m getting at the diner and it’d mean no more midnight shifts or moving my family into my beat-up van—that’d be great!!!”

“I’m not kidding,” says Hector. “Rudy wants you to stop by his restaurant as quick as you can.”

“YES!” screams Santo, now full of the emotion of hope. He had been expecting to drive home and go to sleep. Wow, now what a change this unexpected news has created for him! His heart is beating rapidly and he no longer feels tired at all. After dropping Hector off, Santo rushes home and takes a quick shower, puts on some clean clothes, carefully combs his hair, and hustles over to Rudy’s Restaurant. There, Rudy greets Santo warmly, and after a discussion, Santo is hired.

When he leaves the restaurant having signed a contract, Santo now realizes his life has just changed from having hoped to land this job to knowing he now has the job. He experiences this change as the emotion of happiness.

At home, Santo gets into bed to get some sleep, but finds that he can’t conk out even though he hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. With his mind racing, he thinks, “I have to buy some new clothes tomorrow. Man, what did I do to land this job at Rudy’s? Well, the big thing I did was to stop by there during an off-hour and introduce myself to Rudy even when he wasn’t looking for help. I told him that he had a great restaurant. I think it really helped when I told him that if he needed a sub for a day at any time I’d work for half the normal salary just to show him what I could do. Rudy liked that and tried me out, and I bet that’s what really sold him on me. I’ll remember to do that some more if I end up out of work again.”

Parable Interpretation

Let’s see if there is anything useful about hope and happiness that we can discover from this story. Notice that Santo, as he was heading home, had a plan to deal with his feelings of tiredness. Santo has confidence that he has a set of well practiced skills that are very likely to achieve this as he heads home in his van, and he begins to carry them out by guiding his car into traffic. As he does so, he is unaware of any emotion. He does feel tired, and this type of feeling is less intense than a full blown emotion

As soon as Santo hears about the new job opportunity, he immediately recalls his desire to get a better job. Santo quickly appraises this new information. Clearly he notices that this is a change from what he was expecting. This change leads to the emotion of hope. The function of this positive emotion is for him to shift his attention from all that he was thinking about before the emotion began and to instead focus on getting the job at Rudy’s. The emotion also functions to give Santo a boost of energy so that he can increase his chances to get this job. Even though he had felt sleepy and exhausted before having the emotion of hope, he uses the boost of energy to think about what the best things to do right now, and he changes his plan to go to sleep as soon as he got home. Instead, he decides to wash up, get to Rudy’s Restaurant and apply for the job.

Upon landing the job, Santo has achieved his desire, and with that, he realizes this means that there will be some good changes in his life, and he experiences the emotion of happiness. This happiness serves the function to give him a new burst of energy. We oftentimes need this extra burst of energy when we achieve a desire for two reasons.

First, we have to spend some extra time making arrangements for the new set of circumstances that led to the happiness. In the example involving Santo, he realizes that his new job will require some new clothes. He will have to carve out time during this transition period to pull together money so he can purchase the clothes.

Second, not only do we need the burst of energy to make preparations for our new circumstances that led to happiness, we also can benefit by taking some extra time to think about what led up to our success. By doing this, we can usually find something important to remember that we can reuse in the future. In our Santo example, he recalls how he had offered to work for Rudy at half the usual salary for a day or two so he could show him what a fine waiter he is. Santo will use part of the extra energy from his happiness to do the work necessary to place this very strategy in his memory bank in a form that will be more likely to be recalled if he ever loses his job again.

We see from this story that the positive emotions of hope and happiness function to shift our attention for a period of time to something appraised as particularly important and to provide us extra energy. We use this extra energy to carry out some important skills that can help us better achieve our desires.

Now, sometimes we use the terms “hope” and “happiness” in a broader sense than when we are referring to the emotions of hope and happiness. For example, some people, if asked if they hope to retire in a few years, may reply, “Yes.” At the moment that they say this, they are not in any real emotional state about this issue. Perhaps some pleasant, gentle feeling sweeps through some for a few seconds as they think of a time when they can do more of what they would prefer to be doing as time drifts by. In a few seconds they are thinking of something else.

Sometimes I am asked if I am happy. I might quickly think to myself that nothing is currently bothering me, and so I might reply, “Yes, I guess so.” Here again, there is no emotional state actually occurring as I say this, and the word “happiness” is being used to mean a relatively calm, non-distressed, pleasant experience.

Emotions are feelings, but more intense than most. Although there is no clear dividing line between relatively pleasant feelings and a full blown positive emotional experience, most people can sense when their heart has distinctly quickened, their attention has fastened firmly on a particular desire, changing the subject is hard even if they try, and they find themselves vigorously planning and carrying ideas into actions for a period of time that extends far beyond some fleeting few seconds. Emotions are of this nature.

Okay, there you have it. Here’s hoping the Santo parable and this little discussion gives you a better sense of what positive emotions are all about.

——————————-

Tags DIG Conflict Model, emotions, happiness, hope, positive emotions

Bob Dylan conflict management conflict resolution crying dig for the conflict Emotional pain respect tears

Bob Dylan On Tears

I have discussed the topic of crying and how it relates to how much respect a person might have for the crier in several earlier posts (see here and here). In those earlier posts we looked into the following questions: If I cry when criticized, does that mean I should view myself as acting like a baby? Is it right to view someone who cries as immature? In today’s post I’ll try to enrich some of these earlier issues by discussing Bob Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour “show on the theme of tears (most of his shows are available on YouTube”.

Bob Dylan on Tears

Bob begins his show on tears as follows:

Well, welcome to Theme Time Radio Hour. In the background, some very sad music because this week, we’re gonna learn about sad clowns, crocodiles, and tear-stained make-up. We’re gonna look at a river of tears as we learn about crying. So grab yourself some Kleenex, heck, you better grab the whole box. Not that songs about crying are necessarily sad. This one at least sounds happy. It’s by Question Mark and the Mysterians–“96 Tears.”

Here are some of the lyrics to the song:

Too many teardrops
For one heart to be crying
Too many teardrops
For one heart to carry on

You`re way on top now since you left me
You’re always laughing way down at me
But watch out now, I`m gonna get there

We`ll be together for just a little while
And then I`m gonna put you way down here
And you`ll start crying ninety-six tears
Cry, cry, cry…

Hmmm, if this guy who is singing was a friend of mine actually going through a similar experience, how could I be helpful?

Well, just listening for awhile in a caring manner is almost always a good start. Rather than to be too quick to start offering advice or criticizing in any way, I might just softly summarize, every couple of minutes, what my friend has been saying, thus assuring him that I am accurately listening. If my summary is off the mark in any way, my friend will clarify.

At some point, I might explore with my friend his desire to not be crying. I understand that many people in our culture feel it is an immature act. You see this when someone does begin to cry in front of you and he or she quickly starts to apologize for crying. Is there some reason to change this attitude that crying is an act that only immature people do? Different people have different views about this.

Getting Back to the Dylan Show

After Bob opens his tear-soaked Theme Time Radio Hour show with “96 Tears,” which gave us an example of a man being bitter about his break-up with his lover, he plays a song by the lovely and talented Anita O’Day. In “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine” Ms. O’Day provides us a woman’s perspective on what it’s like to be crying over how a lover mistreated her.

And her tears flowed like wine
Yes, her tears flowed like wine
She’s a real sad tomato
She’s a busted valentine
Knows her momma done told her
That the man is darn unkind

Next up on Bob’s show is a tune by the great blues singer, Bobby Charles, who reminds us that even “Big Boys Cry:”

I cried last night until I couldn’t
I’ll cry tonight, I know I shouldn’t
It hurts to know that I can’t reach her
I learned to lose, she was my teacher

Well I try to hide all the tears down deep inside
But even big boys cry

I climb the walls, I chew my fingers
I run around but her love lingers
Her friends say she don’t talk about me
They say she’s doing fine without me

Well I try to hide all the tears down deep inside
But even big boys cry
Oh

Well I try to hide all the tears down deep inside
But even big boys cry

There are quite a variety of songs that Bob Dylan plays that remind us that crying is part of life for pretty much everyone. Bob introduces one of my favorites like this:

Thomas Fuller once said, “We’re born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed. Hank Williams knew what he was talking about. This song is about a very specific depression inspired by a troubled relationship with his wife, Audrey Sheppard. Here that Lonesome Whippoorwill. He sounds too blue to fly. I’m so lonesome I can cry.

What human being is unable to relate to these sad lyrics?

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind the clouds
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die?
Like me, he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry

After a couple of more sad songs, Bob lightens things up a bit:

We still have plenty of tears to shed here on Theme Time Radio Hour’s crying edition.

He then plays a little of the audio track from the movie A League of Their Own. Tom Hanks, playing a manager of a women’s baseball team begins to shout criticism of one of his players. We hear the player begin to cry. Incredulous, Tom asks, “Are you crying?”

“No,” comes the reply from player, but then we hear her weeping.

“Are you crying?” Tom asks again, but now he is yelling. “There’s no crying! There’s no crying in baseball! There’s no crying in baseball!!! No Crying!!!!!”

For those who didn’t see the movie, it might be hard to understand why this scene strikes so many of us as funny, while touching at the same time. I guess you just have to see the movie to understand. I will say this, despite what Tom says in the movie, I have seen many men even in the major leagues crying after losing a big game. Often, they throw a towel over their head in an effort to hide their tears.

As Bob’s tear-fest show begins to wind down, he provides us a quote from Oliver Wendell Homes-“Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility. One is wind power, the other, water power.”

Then he he tells us that “poets have always used crying as an inspiration. Here’s an example by Dylan Thomas.”

Clown In The Moon

Dylan Thomas

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.

I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

Well that’s pretty much my blog post for today. I hope it has provided you some food for thought about this whole crying stuff. And with that, let’s end with the words that Bob uses as he ends his show on tears:

Well, the old clock on the wall says it’s time to go. It’s a good thing because I’m out of Kleenex anyway. So I’m gonna hop in my car, head down the Robinson Freeway and get myself a beer I can cry into. In the meantime, remember the words of our former president, Woodrow Wilson: There is little for the great part of history except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.

———————
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags Bob Dylan, conflict management, conflict resolution, crying, respect, tears

conflict resolution DSM mental disorders Mental Illness Name calling psychiatrists psychiatry psychologists The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Psychiatric Name Calling: What Do People Say About It?

Post author By Dr. Jeffrey Rubin
Post date May 10, 2015
13 Comments on Psychiatric Name Calling: What Do People Say About It?

In recent weeks, I have been providing a series of blog posts on psychiatric name calling (see here, here, here, and here). In these posts, I have expressed some negative opinions about the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

The DSM provides the names for the various mental health concerns that mental health service providers are often required to use if they want to be paid for their services or if they want to have their research published in professional journals.The language of the DSM places its terminology under the umbrella concepts of “mental illness,” “mental disorder,” and “psychopathology.” In my blog series, I have argued that the pathologizing of human experiences in this way does far more harm than good.

As part of my discussions on this topic, I quoted the opinions of some who agreed, and some who disagreed, with my opinions. The quotes that I used were selected from my own personal readings. Therefore, they may not have been characteristic of how a wider range of different people may think and feel about the DSM approach to labeling the various mental health concerns.

A few years ago, two teams of researchers have sought to obtain a broader range of views on this topic by carrying out surveys. Jonathan D. Raskin and Michael C. Gayle surveyed psychologists who regularly use the DSM, and published their findings in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology (DSM-5: Do Psychologists Really Want an Alternative? 2015, pages 1-18). Lois Holzman and her team surveyed people in some New York City communities, and published her findings on the DxSummit.org website (A Report on Community Outreach: Lay Opinions on Emotional Distress and Diagnosis, http://dxsummit.org/archives/2249). Let’s take a look at their findings.

What the Psychologists Had to Say

Here’s a summary of the survey data by Jonathan D. Raskin and Michael C. Gayle:

Only two published studies, both from the early 1980s, have specifically examined psychologist attitudes toward the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The current article rectifies this by presenting the results of a recent survey of attitudes toward the DSM-IV-TR and DSM-5. Though the DSM has changed over the years, psychologist attitudes toward it have remained remarkably consistent. Although more than 90% of psychologists report using the DSM, they are dissatisfied with numerous aspects of it and support developing alternatives to it—something that psychologists over 30 years ago supported, as well. The finding that almost all psychologists use the DSM despite serious concerns about it raises ethical issues because professionals are ethically bound to only use instruments in which they are scientifically confident.

In the above summary, the number 5 after the letters DSM, refers to the fact that the DSM has undergone five major revisions. Since the 1980s, there have been three such revisions. Ideally, users of the DSM would see clear improvement for each revision.

When a survey was done in the early 1980s, psychologists were clearly skeptical of the DSM-2. As described by Raskin and Gayle,

More than 40% felt it (a) distorted clinician perceptions of clients, (b) applied medical labels to psychosocial problems, (c) was not reliable and valid, (d) emphasized diagnosis over treatment, (e) obscured individual differences, and (f) overemphasized pathology. Almost 60% were dissatisfied or somewhat dissatisfied with the DSM-2 with only 17% satisfied or somewhat satisfied.

When the DSM-3 came out in 1983, Smith and Kraft carried out an updated survey on this revision of the DSM-2. The findings indicated that psychologists at that time (a) preferred social–interpersonal diagnosis, nondiagnosis, and behavioral analysis over DSM-3—in that order; (b) felt that most conditions in DSM-3 were best seen as nonmedical problems in living; (c) believed too little had been done to develop scientific alternatives to the DSM; and (d) thought that client welfare and integrity would be better served by abandoning the medical model. Eighty-five percent disagreed that mental disorders are a subset of medical disorders.

In the latest survey that was carried out by Raskin and Gayle, 128 anonymous psychologists participated. Among the questions that were asked was, “How satisfied are you with the changes being proposed for DSM-5?” Their answers indicated that they were significantly more negative about it than neutral. The general attitude about the latest version of the DSM were very similar to what was found three decades ago, namely, that a significant number of psychologists are unhappy with the DSM.

What Community Folks Had to Say

In the community outreach survey of lay opinions on emotional distress and diagnosis carried out by Lois Holzman and her colleagues, people were asked questions at two annual NYC street fairs attended by millions of people. Conversations lasted from five to over ten minutes each. In all, 143 people participated in the survey in the first of these two surveys, which occurred in 2013. The second one had 149 people who participated, which occurred in 2014.

In the 2013 survey, the focus was on how psychiatric diagnosis affected kids. Forty percent felt that psychiatric diagnosis was not valuable. For the 60% that felt that psychiatric diagnoses can be valuable, 90% of them had reservations. That is, they said that it was only sometimes helpful, there was a danger of misdiagnosis, there was racism involved in diagnosis, and it leads to stigma and over-medication.

Ten percent were completely against diagnosis under any circumstance, some sharing their experiences pertaining to children. Examples of comments from this group follow:

“Medication makes you act out. My grandson was hyperactive, not ADHD and they wanted to put him on Ritalin – I told them no. Drugs at an early age can lead to hard core drugs later in life.”

“I worked with kids who had wrong diagnosis, and this is prevalent.”

“Kids get told in 1^st grade they’re crazy—then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

In the 2014 survey, the researchers:

“tried to go a little deeper and see if we could help people explore the apparent conflict around diagnosis, i.e., its value and its dangers. We also wanted to learn what they thought about the necessity and mandate of diagnosis.

We all know people who have gotten very depressed when they’ve lost a loved one, or children who cannot sit still in school, lots of folks who are angry and demoralized about not finding a job. Do you think any of these people need to get a diagnosis in order to get help with their emotional pain?

(IF THEY SAY YES, ASK THE NEXT 2 QUESTIONS):

Do we need to relate to them as having brain disorders? Or chemical imbalances?

Right now, in most settings, if you want to get help with ANY kind of emotional pain from a mental health professional, they are required to give you a diagnosis. Do you agree with that?

Are there other ways to support people emotionally? What do you think could help them?

Like me, you probably know people in your family, church, or at work who have serious emotional problems, who may have been diagnosed with major depression, bipolar or schizophrenia. Obviously people deserve and need top quality mental health care including access to medication. Do you think that even in these situations a diagnosis can limit the person, label them, and stigmatize them? If so, how?

From our past surveys we have found that people are conflicted about diagnosis and labels. They find it relieving to get a diagnosis and at the same time feel like the diagnosis can stigmatize or label them. Why do you think that so many of us are conflicted about this, feel it can be both helpful and harmful?

Here’s a brief summary of the finding, as described by Dr. Holzman:

Diagnosis Needed: 60% of respondents said no, people did not need a diagnosis to get help with their emotional pain. The majority of the 40% who said diagnosis was needed told us that that was the only way to get to talk to someone.

Only those who said yes, diagnosis was needed (40%), were asked the next two questions.

1a. Biological Basis: 89% of those who said diagnosis was needed said we shouldn’t consider such people as having a brain disorder or chemical imbalance.

1b. Diagnosis Required: 75% of those who said diagnosis was needed did not agree that it should be required.

Other Ways to Support (alternative types of treatment):

Everyone offered an alternative, with most people suggesting more than one. The most frequent responses involved talking to people—therapy, counseling, group therapy being the most common (including, “A center they can go to without getting diagnosed”), followed by family, friends, self-help and support groups.

A wide variety of social activities and life style changes were recommended—volunteering, hobbies, music, dance, writing, meditation, exercise, yoga, diet, prayer and creating community (“Have events that bring people out, like this fair”).

& 4. Concerns about Diagnosis: 90% (including those who thought it was needed) expressed concerns about the stigma of diagnosis, the dangers of misdiagnosis, and/or the over-medication that too often accompanies a diagnosis.

Once you have that label it doesn’t stay at the clinic. You carry it with you for a long time.

People start calling you crazy. It can be a shame for the family.

I had to fight to get counseling for my kid. They just wanted to give him drugs.

Getting a diagnosis limits life experience, you’re treated differently, you feel like an outcast.

It’s helpful to the clinic but not in everyday life.

It’s good to know what’s wrong, but it might make them feel worse about themselves and put them in a box.

It pigeon-holes people and the diagnosis becomes all that I am.

It stagnates them. It keeps them on one path with only one destination.

They think something’s wrong with them.

There is too much use of medication. It is a quick fix to avoid a real understanding.

Against it – children are still growing. Against medication.

So there you have it, some views other than mine about psychiatric name calling. In interpreting these findings, I think it’s important to bear in mind that the views of the people surveyed developed in the context of a multibillion dollar advertisement campaign by the pharmaceutical companies over many years that is designed to convince them that emotional concerns are diagnosable illnesses requiring medication treatment. How might the views of those surveyed been different without this high finance selling of the illness model?

——————————-

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags DSM, mental disorders, mental illness, psychology

Bob Dylan conflict resolution fools insults Listening skills Name calling

Bob Dylan On Fools

Bob Dylan begins his Theme Time Radio Hour show about fools, with a beautiful instrumental version of “Why Do Fools Fall In Love.” After a few bars of this tune, it continues in the background as Bob begins to speak:

James Thurber

James Thurber once said, “You can fool too many of the people too much of the time,” and for the next hour we’re going to try to do just that. Welcome back to Theme Time Radio Hour. Today we’re going to talk about patsies, stooges, marks, jesters, jokers, buffoons, clowns, tricksters, harlequins, and the village idiots, because in honor of April first, it’s our fools’ program. Everybody plays the fool sometimes, and for the next hour we’re going to play the greatest records about our favorite halfwits, the fools.

Recently, I provided a post on this blog titled, “Bob Dylan on Madness,” as an entertaining way to practice some of the basic principles I regularly discuss. That post was so popular that I thought, Why not do a similar post utilizing Bob’s show on fools? After all, in addition to people at times seeking to insult themselves and others by saying such things as “You’re mad” or “You’re crazy,” they do likewise by saying such things as “You’re a fool” or “You’re a buffoon.” Are there more respectful, helpful ways to deal with situations that give rise to such name calling? I think so. Let’s see if we can have some fun thinking about this issue as we review Bob’s show on fools.

Chain of Fools

After Bob’s brief introduction, he dives right into Aretha Franklin’s emotionally charged song, “Chain of Fools.”

For five long years
I thought you were my man
But I found out
I’m just a link in your chain

You got me where you want me
I ain’t nothin’ but your fool
Ya treated me mean
Oh you treated me cruel

Chain, chain, chain
(Chain, chain, chain)
Chain of fools

Every chain, has got a weak link
I might be weak yeah
But I’ll give you strength

Oh, hey
Chain, chain, chain
(Chain, chain, chain)
Chain of fools

Here we find a woman calling herself a fool because she sees herself attached to a man who treats her cruel. I wonder how I would react to a woman telling me a similar story. I guess I would not rush into giving her any advice, but rather, give her some time to be with her emotional experience while I listened in a caring, empathic manner.

As we discussed in an earlier post titled “To Listen, Or To Criticize,” we often jump too quickly into providing advice. If you would like your listening skills to be respected, it helps to summarize, every few minutes, what is being said in a caring manner, thus reassuring the person talking to you that you are indeed listening and accurately hearing what is going on.

After perhaps fifteen minutes or so of listening and summarizing, I would continue to listen, but I might begin to start asking, as gently as possible, a few clarifying questions. I often use the DIG Conflict Model to come up with my questions. The letters of the word “DIG” would remind me to ask about what she “desires” in this situation, what is “interfering” with her desire, and if she feels she is “guilty” of doing something wrong. I would gently encourage her to be as specific as she could be. A statement like, I’m guilty of being a fool” is way too vague to be helpful in coming up with any practical plan. “I’m guilty of not going out to social events on Friday evenings so I can find a loving relationship with a man who would treat me with respect,” fits better with my image of being specific.

Aretha Franklin’s song continues with these words:

One of these mornings
The chain is gonna break
But up until the day
I’m gonna take all I can take, oh hey

Chain, chain, chain
(Chain, chain, chain)
Chain of fools

We see a glimmer of hope in these words. That weak link in the chain is not completely unbreakable. I think that at some point in my relationship with a woman dealing with this type of concern, I might ask what she thinks she might do if the chain would indeed break. My overall goal at this point in the relationship would be to focus not so much on what is wrong with what is happening in her life, but what she could specifically do to improve her situation.

Further On In the Show

A little later in Bob’s show, he introduces another song:

Hank Snow

Everyone plays the fool sometime. Hank Snow knew that. We talk about Hank an awful lot [on my show], and he was one of the biggest voices in country music from 1951 and 1955. He had a remarkable number of top ten hits. This is from the tail end of that streak, in 1955–“Now And Then There Is A Fool Such As I.”

Here are some of the lyrics:

Pardon me, if I’m sentimental
When we say goodbye.
Don’t be angry with me should I cry.
When you’re gone, yet I’ll dream
A little dream as years go by.

Now and then there’s a fool such as I.

…

And now you say that we are through.
I’m a fool, but I’ll love you dear
Until the day I die.
Now and then there’s a fool such as I.

Like the Aretha Franklin song, this Hank Snow song is about someone in love who is feeling like a fool. As it turns out, almost all of the songs Bob plays over the course of his hour show is about love and someone feeling like a fool. But they differ nevertheless. In the first two songs we find out about two people who are calling themselves fools, but the first one is about a woman who feels she’s a fool for staying connected with a man even though he treats her bad. The second song is about a man who feels foolish for continuing to love a woman even after she said they are through.

In other songs that Dylan plays during his show, a singer is trying to convince her parents that she’s no fool for loving a man that they think is less than ideal. Then there’s one about a man who is trying to convince a woman that she’s a fool for not loving him despite all that he has to offer.

One of the highlights of Bob’s show is a little audio clip of Humphrey Bogart, as Sam Spade, confronting Mary Astor as the femme fatale, Brigid, in the classic film noir, The Maltese Falcon.

Brigid, desperately: You’ve been playing with me, just pretending to trap me like this. You didn’t care at all. You don’t love me.

Spade: I won’t play the sap for you.

Brigid: You know it’s not like that! You can’t say that!

Spade: You haven’t played straight with me for half hour at a stretch since I’ve known you.

Brigid: You know down deep in your heart that in spite of everything I’ve done, I love you.

Spade: I don’t care who loves who, I won’t play the sap for you. You killed Miles and you’re going over for it.

As you can see, even when used in the context of love difficulties, the word, “fool,” or its related terms, are used to refer to quite a variety of different circumstances.

As we leave the love arena, we see that the term is used in even a wider set of circumstances. Thus, Bob tells us about the enormously talented singer, Frankie Lymon, who died way too early with a heroin syringe by his side. As another example, he tells us about a couple of football games:

Every field has its fools, and the biggest mistakes are made on the football field. For example, Roy Unsway Regales played for the University of California, and in the 1929 Rose Bowl Game, he got turned around and ran 65 yards in the wrong direction.

Jim, upon realizing his mistake.

That’s nothing compared to Jim Marshal who played for the Minnesota Vikings. On October 25, 1964 the Vikings were playing against the San Francisco 49ers. Marshal recovered a fumble and ran 66 yards in the wrong direction into his own end zone. He was so excited he threw down the ball in celebration. The ball landed out of bounds, resulting in a safety for the 49ers. Fortunately for him, the Vikings won the game anyway, 27 to 22, and I was there that day. Strange but true.

We All Sometimes Play the Fool

Throughout the show, Bob reminds us repeatedly that everyone plays the fool sometime. He does it in a variety of ways. Thus, before playing the song, “Three Times a Fool,” Bob tells us “It wouldn’t be bad if you were just a fool once a year, but all of us are fools on more than one occasion.”

A little later, he says:

We’re talking about fools of all stripes here on Theme Time Radio Hour. As Jean Brown once said, “Foolproof systems don’t take into account the ingenuity of fools.”

And still a little later, Bob gives us some quotes from Shakespeare and Twain on the subject of fools.

Shakespeare looking a little foolish in his outfit.

Shakespeare spoke quite often about fools. For example, in A Midsummers Night Dream he said, Lord, what fools these mortals be? Twelfth Night gave us the following line, Foolery, Sir, does walk about the orb like the sun. It shines everywhere. And From As You Like it, The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.

Shakespeare, hell of a cat.

…

As Mark Twain says,”The first of April is the day we remember who we are the other 364 days of the year.

And so when people call us a fool, perhaps we may find that the sting of the comment is lessened if we keep in mind that no doubt these name callers have had their share of playing the fool on plenty of occasions. And when, out of old habits, we find ourselves calling either ourselves, or someone else a fool, perhaps a little sympathy with the human condition is in order.

Tags conflict management, criticism, fools, insults, name calling, negative criticism, respect, types of criticism

conflict resolution learning through stories respect

On Being Respected

How does someone learn how to become a person people respect? Arguably, the best way to develop a deep understanding of this is through stories that depict characters that, as they mature, grow into individuals that have the set of characteristics that people highly respect. In the Cool Steve Stories, a coming-of-age trilogy of a boy growing up in Brooklyn, I have attempted to provide my readers with just this type of story.

A Hero Grows in Brooklyn

The first novel of the trilogy, A Hero Grows in Brooklyn, can be downloaded for free on any e-book reader, iPad, or computer. It is also available as a paperback book.

In the trilogy, the topic of respect initially arises when Steve is only five-years old. His Uncle Ricky has taken him to Yankee Stadium, and Mickey Mantle has just won the first game of a double header with a spectacular catch in center field.

The story continues from here:

“Hey Steve,” says Ricky as he stretches his arms way above his head, “while we wait for them to get ready for the next game let’s take a walk. My legs are getting stiff.”

“Can we go way up there?” Steve asks pointing to the seats high above them.

“Let’s go see,” says Ricky.

In the crowded aisle between the dark green seats, slowly they make their way up to a covered cement walkway with hordes of fans on long lines seeking to buy peanuts, hot dogs, ice cream, beer, and soda. Uncle Ricky looks around to get reoriented.

“Let’s try this way, Steve.”

“Wow, Uncle Ricky, I never seen so many people!”

The crowd thins out along an upwardly sloping tunnel. Soon, they emerge into bright sunlight and Steve finds himself in the upper deck behind home plate. This view provides a bird’s-eye perspective. Looking down from the wall in front of the upper deck’s first row of seats, Steve’s mouth flies open, and he suddenly takes a step back. “I bet a guy could get pretty hurt if he fell from here!” he cries.

“Ya wanna find out,” Ricky responds mischievously. “Here. I’ll give ya a boost,” and as he says this he bends down, interlocks the fingers of his hands together and holds them by Steve’s feet.

Steve feigns anger, throwing some mock punches at his uncle while laughing.

As they begin the journey back to their seats, Steve notices the unique smell of stale beer and Cracker Jacks.

“So, Steve, you getting excited about starting kindergarten in the fall?”

“I hear they got some mean kids there.”

“There are always a few kids trying to earn respect by pushing kids around.”

“Resect? What’s that mean?”

“Not resect, respect.”

“Yeah, re… respect, Uncle Ricky, what’s it mean?”

“Well, if ya like a guy then ya…” Ricky begins to say but then pauses. He was about to say, If you like a guy you respect him. But then he thinks about his older brother Mike, who happens to be Steve’s dad. Ricky realizes that he likes Mike, even loves him, but he doesn’t truly respect him. Then Ricky wonders to himself if you can dislike a guy and still respect him. Hmmm.

“Well?” says Steve.

“I guess I’ll tell ya what my dad used to say about respect. You’re a little young ta understand this yet but anyway, every now and then your nonno, in his heavy Italian accent, would say ta me and your dad when we were young, ‘Ricky, Mike, if ya wanna get respect ya gotta learn how ta use this-uh, wit’ this-uh, and wit’ this-uh,” and as Ricky imitates Steve’s grandfather saying these words he points first to his right arm’s biceps, then to his head, and then to his heart.

The little Yankee Stadium scene that I just described, only begins the process of encouraging people to start thinking about the nature of respect. Why Ricky doesn’t respect Steve’s dad, and how Steve, when he becomes a teenager, manages to become respected are answered by reading the rest of the trilogy. By following over the course of a few months the characters as they deal with specific situations that we can relate to, we find ourselves envisioning how we might handle similar situations. As psychologist Rollo May put it, these types of stories are the fibers with which a person weaves a coherent fabric of identity and meaning.

Other Ways to Learn About Respect

An alternative to stories for learning about respect, is to review a list that some people put together of the characteristics that they believe lead to respect. One such list, for example, is provided by wikiHow’s, titled “How to Be Respected.” Among the items listed is:

Being a Good Role Model

Present yourself well

Set an example for others

Make your own decisions

Don’t be overly materialistic

Don’t procrastinate

Be a cultured person

Keep your language clean and respectable

Exude confidence

Be optimistic

Stick to your word

Excel at something

Admit to your mistakes

Avoid getting overly intoxicated in public

Stick up for yourself when you need to

Respecting Others

Greet people in a proper and friendly manner

Never bully others or take advantage of their weaknesses

Give everyone a chance

Be prepared to see other people’s side of the story

Don’t act like a know-it-all

Be discreet

Each item on this list comes with a few examples along with a picture illustrating the point that is being made. Although I believe that there are some essential characteristics left off the list, and many of the examples are too vague to readily put into practice, the items are worth thinking about.

I think the list can be usefully employed as part of a discussion on this topic, especially if those participating in the discussion are encouraged to tell a little story of their own depicting an incident in which someone they know acted in a way that illustrates the items on the list.

Of course another way to learn the skills that lead to respect is to begin reading this blog, starting with the first post, and systematically going through each succeeding post at your own pace. It’s free, and engaging in discussions can be done by posting comments in the “comment section” that appear at the bottom of each of the posts.

Conclusion

Regardless of how else you choose to learn about respect, the Cool Steve Stories is a great way to supplement your learning. The process has elements of fun, sadness, frustration, excitement and humor.

To end today’s post, let’s take a little look at how five-year old Steve ended his day at Yankee Stadium.

After Steve’s mom, Marie, makes him take a shower, it’s time for both of them to watch the Ed Sullivan Show, a Sunday night tradition of theirs.

“Did it start yet?” asks Steve hurrying into the room wearing his pajamas, still dripping from his shower.

“Not yet,” says Marie as she turns the RCA dial to channel two. “Hmmm. That doesn’t look so good.” She adjusts the rabbit-ear antenna so she can get rid of the shadows that are interfering with the picture quality. “There,” she says, “that’s better. You need anything before the show starts?”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“Well, in that case, I’ll just come over here and sit by my handsome young man.” Together they settle in on their green sofa to enjoy the night’s variety acts.

Steve likes the juggling act. Not only does the guy get balls flying all around, but he also performs a smooth routine using cigar boxes that dance in the air.

During a commercial, as Marie goes into the kitchen to get something to nibble on, Steve gets two pink rubber balls and a baseball and tries to juggle. As he tosses one ball up and then the second, he observes that he is already too late to catch the first because it is about to hit the floor. He tries again and again.

Marie comes back into the living room with a large bowl. The aroma of fresh buttered popcorn enters Steve’s nostrils. He puts the balls down, goes over to the sofa, snuggles with his mom, and together they munch away on the soft, fluffy treat.

“Steve, what was all that commotion I heard in here while I was making the popcorn?”

“I was trying ta juggle, Mom. It’s kinda hard. I’m gonna practice a little everyday till I get it.”

The show drifts by. Marie recalls the quarrel she had with Mike before he left for the bar. He had promised to defrost the refrigerator today, and it hadn’t gotten done. Oh, if this had been the only unfulfilled promise of Mike’s she would have said nothing, nothing at all. But time and time again!

Aching memory after aching memory drift through her thoughts as Dean Martin croons his way through “That’s Amore.” Then Marie looks over to her son. She sees the golden highlights of his dark brown hair, his beautiful face, his sweet lips, the sparkle in his eyes… and as she gazes at him waves and waves of joy flow through her.

The show comes to an end. Steve begins to yawn. It’s been a long day.

“Come on, Steve, it’s time to go to bed,” says Marie.

When they get to Steve’s bedroom, Marie tucks Steve in with his teddy bear. “I love you, Steve,” she says as she leans over and kisses him on his forehead.

“I love ya too, Mom.”

Snuggling with his teddy bear, Steve closes his eyes. His mind drifts here and there. After a while, he begins to dream of one day becoming the next great Yankee centerfielder.

——————————-

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Tags A Hero Grows in Brooklyn, learning through stories, Mickey Mantle, respect, respect list, The Cool Steve Stories, Yankee Stadium