family

The Value of a Heart Attack

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, family, mindfulness, Personality, Self-Awareness

I had a heart attack a couple of months ago, and it has been a very good thing for me. Let me explain. I’m not saying that I’m “glad” that I had a heart attack, and of course I wish I hadn’t had this event, but as I look at the larger picture, I see that this has been a good thing for me in several ways.

Briefly, I had been having some tachycardia for some time, perhaps a year or two. More specifically, I had been having occasional chest “pressure” (not so much pain) off and on when I was walking, running, or playing basketball. So, now I am pretty sure that the blockage in an artery that led to the heart attack had been happening for a couple of years, and very likely to some degree for many years. The night I ended up going to the hospital was challenging. First, I’ve never been in a hospital, never been on any medication, and never have had surgery of any kind since I had a tonsillectomy when I was six. So, I was not particularly prepared for the symptoms of consistent chest pains that eventually led me to go to the ER and then by ambulance to the hospital and quickly in surgery for angioplasty. From start (midnight Monday morning) until noon Tuesday, being a total of 36 hours, I was all of what I didn’t want. Through many adjustments, however, this is an event that is past and I can reflect on the many positive things that occurred at that time and have occurred since then. Let me elaborate:

Life saving

I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize that the various medical professionals who assessed me and ultimately performed the angiogram performed well to the person. It is impossible to know if this heart attack might have healed itself had I chosen not to go to the hospital. But it is possible to think that I might have died. I am thankful for professional people who know what they are doing, and I am thankful to be alive.

New learning for old thoughts

There are two important things that I “learned” during this whole process: I will die; I need to live. Previous to this incident “knew” that I would die, but now having possibly been minutes away from dying, the fact that I will sometime most surely die is a lot more real. Previously, I had an academic understanding of dying, but now I have what appears to be a more personal understanding that I will die.

The more important thing that I learned during this process is substantially more significant. Previously, I “knew” that I wanted to live but I didn’t put much thought, much less feeling, into it. I just enjoyed living. After the incident, I discovered something substantially different from wanting to live. I learned that I need to live. I realized that I am alive to serve people and that these people seemingly need me. Most specifically, I need to live for the people I see in my office, often because I am the only person who really knows them, and in some ways the only person who loves the whole of them. This is no small thing, and I have always taken this privilege of knowing people seriously and with great appreciation that people put their lives in my hands. Now, however, I see this task as even more intense. I have had several patients say something like, “Please don’t die Ron,” which seems to affirm the apparent fact that I need to be alive. In God-talk, I think that God yet wants me to be of service to people. This includes most specifically the people in my office, but also in the writing that I do and want to do. Interestingly, these days I find my therapy with people to be focused on how people can be of some service to humanity. I have always focused on people understanding themselves, being themselves, and communicating themselves, but therapy is not ultimately about oneself but rather how one can serve humankind out of a foundation of self.

My needing to be alive is also for my family and friends, of course, but frankly these folks could do with my dying better than people for whom I am the only person in their lives that knows them. I don’t know if I will live for hours or decades but I want these hours or decades to be useful to humankind.

New family

My family has solidified since this cardiac event, and to some degree it has been reframed. Deb and I had the privilege of having a foreign exchange student from Sweden live with us for his senior year in high school along with Jenny and with Krissie who was also a senior. We had occasional contact with Andreas (“Andy”) over the intervening years but he contacted us not long after Krissie died two and a half years ago and flew over here to be with us and refresh our relationship. He refers to us as “Mom and Dad” and to his mother as his “Swedish Mom” (his dad died 10 years ago), and it is a pleasure to have a “son”, almost as if he had replace the loss of Krissie. When Andy heard about my heart attack, he immediately bought a ticket to fly here because he “didn’t want me to die” before he could renew our relationship. So we planned a journey with Andy from our home in Wisconsin through Omaha where we picked up Jenny and then the four of us proceeded to visit with our good friend, Tim, in his Mountain-side home just outside of Denver. While the five of us were sitting around the dinner table, I realized that this group of five is my “family” even though I am biologically related only to Jenny.

Since that time I have come to see that people have different families in different constellations. Very often people see “family” as only those biologically related to one another, but this doesn’t always work, especially when one or more people in the biological family are toxic, or perhaps just not personally developed. People can do well to discover what their new family is, or what they want it to be as they grow in life. My own “family” has changed many times over my years from my family of origin with originally 4 members, then 5 when my sister came along 9 years later, then my fraternity family, then my first wife and I, then my seminary family, then my graduate school family, then my wife and two daughters, then my daughters and I after the divorce, and then Deb, Krissie, and I when Krissie came to live with us, then the 4 of us, then back to Deb and me with Jenny on the side. And now this new family of 5. I see people often struggling with biological family and coming to a way of seeing what their new family can be. I am reminded of what Jesus said when he was on the cross and was informed, “Your brothers and mother are here for you.” He said, “Who is my family but the ones I have love and have loved me.”

New body awareness and care

I talked to the cardiologist who supervised my brief hospital stay and noted that I usually work out three times a week, run three times and week, play basketball regularly, and have a pretty good diet. His answer, “Well, if you hadn’t been doing these things, you might have had a heart attack at 58 instead of 78,” noting that my genes are the primary reason for the heart attack (LDLs, “bad cholesterol primarily). So, my diet and exercise need to be substantially improved. We have now been two months on a largely Mediterranean diet replete with lots of veggies and fruit. I have found it interesting that my tastes have changed a bit, that I feel satisfied, and that I snack a whole lot less, and certainly a lot less sugar and other “cheap” carbohydrates that are gluten-based. I am interested to see how this diet change holds up over time.

The second thing that I have done for my body is to be more consistent with my workout routine, now daily with running (winter on the treadmill), lifting, and planking. I used to struggle to maintain a marginal workout and now I find that I can increase all of these activities. Likely, my heart is responding to the diet and exercise.

There is a third element that I must admit which is loosely related to what I must call anxiety, albeit with a bit of chagrin because I am loathe to admit to having any psychological disorder. Indeed, I come from a family all of whom have suffered from some form of anxiety, so whether I acquired it genetically or socially, I am inclined to think too much about things, namely things I do. I think most of this has to do with my “caretaker” temperament, namely a person who is property oriented and a “doer” in life. I have always been inclined to think about what I need to do in a day’s time or a week’s time, something that is good at the start but not in the end because such thinking can lead to a kind of anxiety because I always have things on my mind to do. To a fault. So, I found a mantra that has helped me deal with my caretaking/doer nature without changing who I am: In Due Time. Note the play on words with “do” instead of “due” but of course, it could also be “In Due Time” as well. It has been helpful as I lie in bed for a few moments in the morning with my espresso and think of what I might do in the day.

The value and limitations of professional people

First, I am not inclined to rely upon “professional” people for the most part. This is a part of my independent nature, something like, “do it, do it wrong, do it over, do it right” orientation to life. Furthermore, I am suspicious of many professionals who tend to stretch beyond their actual level of competence and often see their profession as central in life. Well, I certainly do the same because I think that everything is psychogenic, i.e. psychologically caused, like my heart attack for instance. So, over the last two months or so I have consulted with various professionals who rendered advice, or in some cases a regimen of “treatment” for my heart. Some of them have been helpful, some harmful, but all of them have been people of intelligence and integrity. Likewise, all of them have been limited in understanding things beyond their own profession and they have not always seen me as a unique person not always fitting into the mold of everyone else.

The cardiologist, for instance, very bright and certainly capable, a guy who does heart transplants and the like as well as the simpler angioplasty that he did on me. He put me on several medications, namely statins, blood thinners, and a beta blocker. I suppose most people whom he sees in his practice profit from his diagnosis, advice, and treatment. But most people are not me. So, I am on these three medications for a few days until my body erupted against these meds, in fact to such an extent that I actually fainted for a few seconds. As a result of my body reaction to these meds, I just stopped taking them and seemingly have survived well without medication. It is important to note that I have never been on any medication ever so my body is not prepared for medication of any kind. So, I look on this brilliant cardiologist as doing his job well and serving hundreds of people, but he didn’t serve me. I hold no grudges.

In addition to the cardiologist I saw a naturopath, actually starting a couple of weeks before my heart event. This individual, someone with three doctoral degrees, put me on a series of “supplements” to assist in my heart. I saw her originally before the heart event and she did a brief interview and then had me take some blood tests and then the supplements. Long story short, the supplements were really bad for my body, which erupted in a nearly whole body rash. I got off the supplements immediately (with her advice) but it took seven weeks for me to get over the rash. With this individual, too, it is likely that she did what works for most people, but not for me. I am a bit displeased that she didn’t see the heart attack as a possibility because I mentioned that I had been having some tachycardia and other heart-based symptoms, but again, perhaps most people would have profited from her hole regimen of meds, just not me. I hold no grudges.

I consulted with a trainer whom I happen to play basketball with about my workout routine. Cory was very helpful with some recommendations for diet (drink 8 glasses of water every day and confirming the Mediterranean diet), but more importantly recommending an increased workout routine, which I have followed. He too is limited in his overall understanding of who I am and certainly not aware of the psychogenic element or my lack of desire to be body buff. But he was helpful.

I have learned that no one knows everything, and certainly no one knows everything about me. Nor should they. I just need to “consult” and then fit that consultation into my own system and experiment with my body and soul to go what ultimately feels right and helps me.

All in all, my heart attack was good for me in all of these ways. I feel better than I have felt for some time, perhaps a year or so. Certainly, my being better has to do with all that people have done for me and what I have done for myself.

The Deep Hole Phenomenon

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, Self-Awareness

Three is a deep “hole” inside many people. This “deep hole” causes people great distress and often causes other people distress. So, what does it mean to talk about someone’s “deep hole”? It means that this person feels a certain “emptiness” inside that cannot seem to be filled. This deep hole phenomenon has resulted in many diagnoses, many treatments, and many misunderstandings. Instead of talking about these diagnoses, which simply look to label this deep bole with some kind of label, I prefer to first look at what the symptoms of this deep hole are, note how this deep hole affects how people operate in life, how it affects their social and intimate relationships, and what can be done about it. What I am really interested is how people can feel the deep hole inside of them and how they can find a resolution to the deep hole. Equally important is how their friends and families can see this deep hole and find ways to successfully relate to people with deep holes in their psyches. First, allow me to briefly identify the psychiatric terms that are used to describe this phenomenon

The diagnoses used for the deep hole

Borderline personality disorder (BPD). This diagnosis is usually used for such people. Interestingly, BPD was originally called “pseudo-neurotic schizophrenia” because people with BPD can feel and speak quite healthily, quite anxiously, or quite depressed, but there are times when they seem to feel and speak with a nearly delusional thought or feeling.

Depressed, anxious, PTSD, or just “stressed. People with the deep hole I am talking about can be anxious or depressed for sure and often think they suffer from PTSD or feel unduly stressed.

Bipolar. Unfortunately, this disorder is now quite commonly diagnosed and more commonly felt to be what one suffers due to his or her deep hole. Bipolar disorder is in the category of a “thought disorder,” which includes schizophrenia and an involutional depression.

Relational conflict. Understandably, people with this deep hole experience a good deal of distress in their relationships, both toward and from their partners and friends.

Now, let’s proceed to what I consider to be more important matters.

The symptoms of the deep hole

Felt emotional distress. The person does not feel emotionally stable

Lack of clear sense of self:  Granted, “self” is an undefined term. Usually people can’t clearly answer the question of what they want in life and what they can do in life.

Seeking undue amount of approval or attention: This can vary from demanding attention and focusing on what other people are doing to times of complete retreat.

Primary symptom of fear: Perhaps the most central of all symptoms. This includes generalized anxiety, OCD-like symptoms, panic attacks, and unrealistic fears all of which are beyond the range of normal fears such as loud noises.

An “external” “locus of control”: This is related to many other symptoms, such as seeking approval. The idea is that the person sees him/herself as unduly controlled by external events, persons, bad luck, and can include undue awareness of physical symptoms of distress.

Variety of physical symptoms: Very often this includes “everything hurts” as in fibromyalgia, but more commonly an intense awareness of small physical sensations that tend to dominate the individual’s awareness.

Lack of sustained relationships: The individual seems unable to sustain intimate relationships as well as personal, friend-like relationships. Often, the individual seeks more from a relationship that the other person can provide.

General dissatisfaction with work: Many such people say something like, “I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.” Often, such people are professional but “fell into” their profession rather than choosing a vocation. They tend to find little value in their work.

Narcissism.  I hate to use such a derogatory term, but I use it without judgment and criticism. Narcissism in adults is the results of natural childhood narcissism resolved in childhood. In other words, if someone has not found a way to feel his/her core self and has not felt safe in the world, such a person continues to retain a childlike understanding that s/he should have everything that s/he wants.

The causes of the deep hole

There is much discussion in the psychological community, some believing that there is a genetic component, which is not my perspective. My belief is that there are two primary origins of this phenomenon: neglect and indulgence. Sometimes both. The worst possible combination is neglect followed by indulgence followed by shame. This is a situation where the individual is neglected for some reason, and then the child puts up such a fuss that s/he is indulged to keep him/her quiet, and then because s/he is still so outrageous, s/he is shamed with rhetorical questions like, “What is wrong with you?”

Thus, the individual does not go through the necessary stages of early childhood:

  • First year of life needs of safety, nurturance, and comfort. Quells fear in life.
  • Second year of life needs: exploration and experimentation. Establishes the rudiments of love in life and ultimately joy
  • Years 2-6: limitation. Allows for anger but prevents the undue expression of anger. Learns that s/he can’t have all that s/he wants in life
  • Year 6+: develops a depth understanding of loss in life, and hence develops a good sense of sadness because everything that is love is eventually lost.

Most people with the “deep hole” have a mixture of having failed to establish the basic emotions: fear, joy, anger, and ultimately sadness.

These early years of deprivation and lack of development are rewarded by other circumstances in life that reward undue fear that dominates one’s life, undue expression of anger that damages relationships, or both.

Examples of statements made

Consider the following statements that I have heard from people who display the deep hole phenomenon:

  • It if go to the hospital, it will be all about her. This statement was made by a man who had been married 40 years to his wife who was in the hospital for serious back surgery having suffered painful sciatica.
  • I deserve to be taken care of. This statement was made by a 30-year old woman who I tested as having a 125 IQ but felt that she was unable to work because of her “PTSD, depression, and anxiety” despite the fact that she displayed none of these symptoms.
  • F*** them; I want to continue talking. This statement was made by an individual with whom I had already had more than 60 minutes of therapy, in reference to the other people who were waiting to see me. (Note that the “therapeutic hour” is 50 minutes giving me time to reflect and take notes)
  • I want everything you have. This statement was made to the whole range of “friends” that this individual had in life. A clear reflection of his “deep hole” that he wanted to fill.
  • Even if you gave me more time in this session, I would always want more. This was made by an intelligent, capable woman whom I saw many years ago. It is interesting that she was aware of wanting but not really aware of how she wanted me to fill her deep hole.
  • I need someone to tell me what to do. This statement was made by an intelligent 15-year old who didn’t know how to do much that would constitute responsible, engaging, and meaningful work, play, or conversation.

The repair of the deep hole.

Nothing short of depth psychotherapy. There is no other means of repairing the damage to the individual that occurred early in life. Depth therapy includes understanding of what happened, feeling the sadness of the losses, primarily of feeling sad for not getting what the child wanted, and then the important element of making adjustment in life to get what they get in life followed by making a meaningful contribution to life.

It does appear that some people with a deep hole find a way to adjust satisfactorily to life on their own, or perhaps with a bit of therapy. This phenomenon might be due to the individual’s understanding that life is full of riches and opportunities but not full of what everything that s/he wants

Sadly, most people with a deep hole in their hearts and minds simply find ways to cope with accommodations, usually some form of addiction, chemical or behavioral.

Dealing with people with the deep hole.

  • Respect the individual. People with a deep hole need just as much respect, love, and care as everyone else.
  • Be aware of the danger. People with deep holes do not know that they are dangerous but they truly are because there seems to be no end to what they want. Their emotional hunger can drive you go give more than you want to give. If you do that, you will resent the individual and be shaming.
  • Limit, limit, limit. When we see people with deep holes, we almost immediately start limiting them in some way, e.g. not going over 60 minutes, not seeing them when they want to be seen (all the time), avoiding giving them answers to the questions they ask because their questions are always a form of, “Why can’t I have everything that I want?”
  • Avoid being angry. You can do this by limiting and not giving in…kindly.
  • Trust your feelings. Many time, you will simply not want to be with this person, which will hurt him/her, but is necessary for your own sanity and peace of mind as well as serving the limiting function.
  • All of this is especially hard if the person is a family member. I recommend that people allow themselves the freedom to “love him but not like him,” a distinction that is very hard for some people to make.

Good for Me; Bad for Me VII: Good for Me; Bad for You

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, family, Feelings, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

My wife likes masks. I don’t. So what does this have to do with “good for me; bad for me”? Lots. Let me explain, but first let me review what I’ve been writing about in recent blogs.

I have proposed that there is a spectrum of things that are, quite simply, “good for me” or “bad for me.” Furthermore, the spectrum ranges from mildly good for to very good for me on one side and then mildly bad for me to significantly bad for me. The spectrum in its simplest form is:

Something that is good for me                               /                             Something that is bad for me

I further suggested that the “bad for me” and the “good for me” sides of the spectrum could be subcategorized as follows:

  • The bad for me spectrum ranges from mild to profound:

Uninteresting      Unpleasant      Aversive                /                      Dangerous      Toxic      Lethal

(mild)                                                                      to                                                     (profound)

  • The good for me spectrum also ranges from mild to profound:

Interesting      Pleasant      Exciting            /           Enlivening     Life-enhancing     Life-sustaining

(mild)                                                        to                                                                    (profound)

We most recently discussed “complexities” of such things, like when you don’t like something that is good for you, like green vegetables that my grandson hates, or working out that I hate. The present discussion is also complex but the complexities are different because they include times when something is:

  • Good for you but not good for someone else
  • Good for someone else but not good for you
  • Good for you and someone else
  • Bad for you and someone else

I want to help you find ways to deal with all these possibilities because this is the heart of the what makes a good relationship, where a brief encounter at the grocery store or  a long-term marital relationship. Furthermore, there are challenges that occur in relationships when there is agreement as well as when there is disparity in what is “good for you” and “bad for you.” In the following categories I am collapsing “liking” and “good for you” for purposes of brevity.

Good for me; Bad for you

This is the most common challenge in relationships, again noting that “relationships” can be intimate or brief. In this category we have at least the following:

  • I like Trump; you don’t; and vise versa
  • I enjoy green vegetables; you don’t
  • Alcohol is good for me; not for you
  • I need to talk; you need silence
  • I watch TV; you don’t
  • I like to read; you don’t
  • It’s good for me to wear a mask; it’s not good for you
  • I trust doctors; you don’t
  • I am a theist; you are an atheist
  • I like debates; you don’t
  • I favor the Black Lives Matter movement; you think it’s awful

Let’s consider one or two of these. The current health, political, and cultural matters so dominate America, whether it is Black Lives, wearing masks, or Trump. How difficult is it for you to go into a store where you “have to wear a mask”, or is it difficult for you to go into a store and see other people without masks? This is an example of the highly emotional element that is always involved in something that is “good for you” or “bad for you.” When emotion runs high, there is a danger of a certain kind of emotionally-caused blindness, superiority, or anger. Consider how you react to the mandate for masks or the lack of people following the mandate for masks, and you will find emotion. Now consider that this emotion erupts from your inner self or soul. Deb and I have just finished our final review of I Want to Tell You How I Feel in which we discuss how “feelings” erupt from a central core self and go sequentially through physical, emotional, cognitive, and active expressions. While we all have all four of these expressions, some people tend to recognize and express themselves in one of these expressions predominantly. Furthermore, emotion is the least developed feeling expression in America and hence the most dominant. So instead of simply noting that you feel sad because you are mandated to wear a mask, you get afraid and angry. Likewise, you do the same jump from sadness to anger and fear if you see other people failing to wear masks. I would propose that it would be helpful for all to recognize that masks are “good for you” and “bad for others” as a start. But this asks a lot of people: it asks them to be sad rather than angry. In my mind this is emotional maturity, i.e. staying with the disappointment, hurt, or sadness rather than letting allowing anger and fear to take over. This is the heart of what Deb and I wrote about in Good Grief.

Back to my original statement: Deb likes masks; I don’t. Well, it’s not true that I “don’t like masks.” What is true is that I choose to wear a mask in my office, which I deem as private, only when requested to do so by a patient. Deb, on the other hand, wears a mask with every patient and requires her patients to wear masks unless it is particularly inconvenient for them to do so. We have found some commonality in the mask-wearing matter but only as we have identified the “core self” matter, which I will discuss forthwith.

We could take any of the other examples noted above and examine them from the perspective of how some things make me sad, a sadness that I might tend to race right by preferring to be self-righteously angry or unduly afraid. There is more to the story but allow me to delay this discussion for a moment and examine the case when something is…

Good for you; Bad for me

We could consider all the political and cultural themes noted above. Let’s look at the Black Lives Matter discussion. This is a very good example of how many people feel deeply passionate about this movement, whereas as other people feel terribly offended. Supporters of Black Lives suggest that Blacks have been disenfranchised in America and feel deeply that there should be some political and cultural change to rectify this inequality. People who are not in favor of this movement speak of “what lives matter also” speaking of Caucasians, or “blue lives matter” speaking of police. On both sides of this discussion, however, lies a tremendous amount of passion with an even stronger element of anger. We have good people who are passionately demonstrating for equality sometimes becoming so engrossed in their emotions that they throw rocks into windows out of anger. We have equally good people who value “land order” and see window-breaking as “wrong”, so they fight back at people who are seeing that America’s cultural state is “not good for them” while their opponents see the movement as “not good for them.”

Let’s consider a somewhat more benign situation that is not so hotly emotional, like it being “good for you” to believe in God compared to people who find such belief “bad for them.” How can this happen? How can people feel that believing in God is bad for them? Being a theist myself, I have to stretch on this one, but I conjecture that atheists find so much wrong with religion that to even speak of a god is to speak a kind of evil. And it is important to note that both theists and atheists talk about “facts” and “science” and “logic” in defending their positions, which are more accurately feeling-based. So what is “feeling-based” mean? How do things become good for me or bad for me out of my “feelings”?

Feeling-based convictions

Since I have just finished the final review of the feeling book that Deb and I have written, this matter is very much on my mind, and it gives me a perspective of this “good for me” and “bad for me” matter. Feelings, as I see them, are an eruption out of our core selves, but I must quickly note that “feelings” and “core selves” are terms that are not defined, nor more so, by the way than time, distance, and mass are defined in physics, life is not defined in biology, or love is not defined in the human condition. To say something is “feeling-based” is tantamount to say that this something erupts from my core self, which in my mind is perfect, or perhaps the better word is pure. Hence, I would contend that the core self of someone who loves Trump is speaking of this purity/perfection just as the Trump hater is speaking of this purity-perfection. Then these two people express their core selves in a way we call “feeling.” So far, so good, as we then have two people speaking from the purity of core self expressing their core selves in feelings. But this is where things go array because people tend to race right through the physical manifestation of feelings and the emotional element of feelings right into the cognitive expression not knowing that they have missed the point. The point is that they have a core self value that is pure but this core value is not easily communicated in words and action without first recognizing the emotional element along the way. If we could agree that the core self always is love-based, we would know that any expression of feeling is love-based. Then we might be able to talk about what we love rather than what we hate; we could talk about what is important to us rather what is anathema; we could talk about what is good for us rather than what is bad for us. This is a tough task and not many people do it.

Good for you; Good for me

This is rather simple category what simply suggests that something, whether Trump or masks, we can find some commonality with something being good for both you and me. Hence, we have political parties, athletic teams, musical themes, and academic pursuits that are good for you as they are good for me. There are actually a lot of them, and it behooves us to remember how many of these things there are.

By the way, something that seem good for me and good for you might not, actually be so good. It might not be ultimately good for Black Lives protesters to feel good about throwing rocks, and it might not be good for the folks on the other side to throw rocks at the demonstrators.

Obviously, the same goes for something that seems bad for you and bad for me. It takes an emotionally mature person to realize that when something seems bad for me, it might also be ultimately good for me. All of this suggests that it important to note the “good for me” and “bad for me” first, then the same for other people before trying to find the common ground, the common ground always being the purity of core self. Oh, that we could communicate our core selves to one another.

The challenge

The challenge is to actually see that our surface “good for me” or “bad for me” erupts from our core selves, which are as close to God (or godliness for you atheists) that we can get. Starting with this we can see that love is at the basis of all good and all that seem bad. Would that our cultural, religious, and political leaders could have this kind of conversation.

In the meantime it will be necessary to simply note, “this is good for me” or “this is bad for me” before we enter into any kind of discussion.