Self-Awareness

You’re Killing Me

Ron Johnson communication, emotional maturity, grief, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Have you ever said, “You’re killing me,” to anyone? Or perhaps some cognate of this expression like, “I’m dying here” or “I can’t live through this.” Or perhaps, you just thought such things and never actually said them to anyone. These kinds of statements can be frivolous, like being with someone who is severely besting you on the tennis court or in your sales department. It could even be a statement you might make with a project that you need to complete, whether at the office or a book you’re writing. As I say that, I am immediately reminded of the hard work Deb and I recently put in on the finishing touches, review, and revision of our latest book. My interest in the “you’re killing me” or its cognates like, “She’s killing him” or “She’s dying under his attention” or less damaging, “He’s killing her with kindness.’ The interest I have in this blog is to address the very real fact that people are, indeed, killing one another but not with kindness, meanness, guns, or pills but with being a severe emotional drain on them. Let me explain.

Kinds of “killing”

  • Caring for a physically impaired person
  • Caring for a mentally impaired person
  • Being in an intimate relationship with someone who is toxic
  • Being in a work setting that is toxic for you
  • Being in an environment that is toxic for you
  • Being toxic to yourself

In all of these circumstances there is never any conscious malicious attempt to “kill” someone. Yet there is a subtle effect that someone, someone, or you yourself has on you. Very importantly, there is rarely an actual intent to do harm to someone by the “killer.” They are not trying to kill someone or even bring them harm. Sometimes, like the “killing with kindness” is meant to do the very opposite. In most cases the “killer” is trying to survive in some way without actually meaning to do the “victim” any damage. These cases are like the proverbial person who can’t swim but drags someone down the water in an attempt to stay alive. The lack of intention to bring harm is central to the case I wish to bring here together with some possible understanding and remedies for such things. I would like you to be alive.

Examples of people being “killed” by the people in their lives:

  • A pastor who has been working diligently, perhaps too diligently, to serve people in his congregation found himself emotionally spent but kept up his work only to recently be in a meeting where the congregation identified the “administration” (which means he) needed to be changed. In simple terms the congregation (by a very slim majority) of voting people (not all of whom had been in church for years) voted against him. In this case he was assaulted by several people whom he had diligently tried to serve over the years he was at this church. When I saw him recently, he admitted that he felt like so many people feel: he didn’t want to live. Not that he wanted to die or that he was suicidal but he felt like he was dying or would rather not live because his profession and his livelihood had been taken away from him. His antagonist people in church are “killing” him.
  • Another pastor (yes, I see such people frequently) has cancer and the “numbers” are not good. He and his wife have been married more than 50 years and have served many churches, raised children, and have done well in their denomination. Due to what we might call too much kindness, this pastor was unable to deny his wife anything over these 50 years and ended up now well into retirement with an excessive amount of debt. The debt load has been hard to bear over the recent years, and importantly, his wife didn’t really that their purchases and traveling were on credit cards, now towering over them. I think some of his cancer has actually been exacerbated and to some degree caused as the result of his being overwhelmed by the debt. Perhaps more importantly, however, he has suffered under the nearly constant, but subtle attack from his wife of leaving them in such a state instead of enjoying being fun-loving grandparents. Most markedly, when I recently saw them together, the wife was far more worried about being “straddled with debt when her husband dies” than actually concerned about his health. I think she has been “killing” him for years, only now being quite obvious.
  • My brother died nearly 25 years ago at age 59 from cancer, but it is my belief that the people in his life “killed” him, albeit without their intention or his knowledge. Bill cared for our aging, mother who suffered from debilitating Alzheimer’s disease for perhaps five years. There is a good bit of research on the care of severely impaired people, whether the impairment is physical, mental, or otherwise. Caregivers actually die sooner than they should die, or at the very least suffer physical and mental diseases as a result of caring for their loved ones. So, my mother “killed” Bill, at least to some degree, certainly without any intention to do so. Caring for a person suffering from dementia is like caring for a two-year old with a 70-year old body. It’s a chore. Additionally, my brother suffered for being with a mentally disturbed individual in his life whom we might say put a “drain” on him, perhaps “draining” him of his ability to sustain life. Indeed, he died specifically from liver cancer but it is my belief that the disease was exacerbated or perhaps caused by the mental strain of caring for people whom he loved but who were impaired.
  • I see many people in my practice who are caring for impaired people, and all of them suffer. The woman who graciously adopted a young man who had been abandoned by his parents in India only to discover that this 13-year old had a mind of a 4-year old, and was found to have sexually molested several other children. He is “killing” his mother.
  • I know of a child who was so outrageous and demanding that he was partly due to the early demise of his mother who died at 45, possibly due to the strain of trying to love and limit this child who was so demanding of her. Of course, he has no idea of the damage that he caused his mother nor would I say such a thing to him, but I am convinced that this young man, possibly in conjunction with his equally impaired sister, caused the demise of their mother.
  • I have not spoken of the sad fact that there are some truly dangerous people in the world, like abusive husbands and wives, fathers or mothers, and the like. Certainly, there are these people.
  • I have felt that someone was “killing me” a couple times in my recent life. One was a time when the two closest members of my family behaved in a way that I felt quite rejected. I didn’t feel “suicidal” but there was a kind of “I could die and that might be not so bad.” These feelings lasted for about an hour as I took a long walk. The feelings past but the memory remains as an important time in my life. I told my wife about the experience. She said that she had had a similar experience not so long ago. We are not immune to such feelings but have a way of processing them.
  • Many men have said “I don’t want to live,” sometimes with my assistance for them to admit to these feelings. These people don’t want to die and they are certainly not suicidal. They just feel quite overwhelmed in life for some reason.

Examples of situations that “kill” people

  • I know of several men who are in jobs that they hate, some of these men making a great deal of money. It seems odd to me that a person stay in a job that he hates “for the money” or allegedly doing it “for the family.” Sadly, I know of several men who have stayed with such jobs and ultimately lost their physical health, mental health, property, or marriages because these jobs were killing them.
  • Other situations that are non-personal include projects people do, perhaps on houses, cars, money, weather, or some event in the world far away.
    • I felt quite distressed during a time when we were in the midst of a kitchen remodeling project somewhat due to delays from the tradesmen, somewhat because it wasn’t my desire to do the project, and perhaps form some other unknown projects.
    • People often feel that they are “being killed” by unforeseen weather, not necessarily a tornado but just some kind of extension of undue heat or cold
    • People often feel “killed” by their lack of money, perhaps enough to just pay the bills of life and limb.
  • People often feel that they are dying because of some physical/medical condition and perhaps treatment. I understand the “chemo” treatment for cancer seems worse than the cancer. I just talked to someone with a variety of things going on with his body, any of which could be life-taking. Interestingly, people can be quite at peace at what might seem to be the end of their lives compared to some kind of debilitating disorder or disability.
  • There several verses in the Bible of God “killing” people, usually “enemies” like in the Hebrew Scriptures, but even more dramatic statements that are unique to the New Testament. It seems that the writer of these verses felt God killing him.

How to handle “you’re killing me” feelings

  • Know that these feelings are quite normal
  • Know that the word “killing” and its cognates is an attempt by the person to present a metaphor, strong as it might be, to him/herself or to someone else. We try to give people a “wide berth” as we often say, when they seek to say some “feeling.” “You’re killing me” is such a statement
  • Be careful to whom you say such things. If you feeling like you “don’t want to live,” be even more careful to whom you say such a thing. The listener has to know this is a feeling, not a fact, not a plan.
  • Do find someone who can hear such things. This would be someone who could hear the feeling and not conclude the fact that the feeling words seemed to suggest.
  • In the rare case where you are in some real danger, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, find a way out whatever the case

 

Thriving and Surviving

Ron Johnson addictions, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

Some years ago I asked to talk to an African American man who had written a number of pieces in the local paper. In my email I said that although I had two Black sons in law and had Black men occasionally come to my office, I often felt that I was missing something important about the Black subculture, namely how Blacks actually engage in conversation, friendship, and intimacy. Intimacy is the heart of any good therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient. I was to meet him in a local café. I had been interested in some of the things he had said about his work, which was essentially with primarily Black kids. When I entered the café, he waved at me and invited me to come to the table where he was sitting with a friend/colleague (who happened to be White) with whom he had been working for a few years. As I approached the table and had not yet sat down, he volunteered something that has stuck with me since our meeting although I have not had contact with this man since. He said something like, “I want to start by saying that you look confident and a man who is thriving in life. If you want to know that your very appearance suggests thriving and it is off-putting. I have lived in an environment that has been one of surviving, not thriving.” I was not offended by his comment, but I did take a figurative step back from the conversation because I had never heard of the difference between thriving and surviving, and I immediately knew that I had not been raised in a survival context. This matter of surviving has continued to be an important aspect of my understanding people, to some degree the subcultures of America like the African American culture, but in a larger context of how many people engage life: they are surviving. Let’s look at the whole business of thriving and surviving that people do. There are many people who survive terrible ordeals, like physical illness or even war, but my focus will be primarily on people who survive through emotional challenges.

People who are surviving

  • People with physical limitations
    • Blindness
    • Debilitating illnesses like cancer and heart disease
    • Physical disabilities
  • People with household difficulties
    • Financial limitations or challenges’
    • Deteriorating living quarters
    • No living quarters
  • People who interpersonal difficulties
    • One partner is seriously physically limited
    • One partner wants out of the relationship
    • One partner is unfaithful
    • One partner is addicted to some behavior or chemical
    • Partners have substantially different religious/philosophical orientations
    • Partners have a cognitively impaired child, which causes them to frequently be at odds with each other
    • Partner one does not like the biological family of partner two. Makes Christmas celebrations difficult
  • And many other difficulties that people need to manage by surviving

People who are surviving personal matters

  • Jack is unable to conquer his addition to one of the following: alcohol, drugs, food, promiscuity, gambling, video game playing, other screen time, working, playing, toxic relationships, or sleeping (too much or not enough)
  • Marge is generally not happy with herself. She thinks she is stupid.
  • Peter is not happy with himself. He thinks he is smarter than everyone
  • Both Marge and Peter are lonely
  • Stan continues to pine for the woman he thinks he should have married, a feeling that makes life difficult for him and secondarily and unconsciously for his wife
  • Dad doesn’t really like his son. Thinks that he is too much like his wife
  • Mom really favors daughter # 1 over daughter #2 because she is more like #1

The ways people survive these difficulties

In a nutshell, they avoid them. The essence of avoiding these difficulties means that they avoid the feelings associated with these difficulties. When they don’t finish the feelings associated the challenges, these feelings stay with them. These feelings then become repressed. It wouldn’t be so bad if these feelings stayed repressed but that is not what happens. The feeling show themselves in things they say or do. When they are speaking or doing something that is a result of not having felt through these feelings, they are accommodating. Very likely, they are not aware that they are accommodating. What happens is that the things they say or things they do are coming indirectly from the repressed feelings without their conscious knowledge. It just “feels right” to say something or do something that may seem quite odd or offense to other people. What are the things that they do to accommodate?

Accommodation

Depending on the individual, the subculture that they live in, the people they live with, the work they do, they play they do, or the any environment where they live, there are many possibilities of accommodation including:

  • Being distrustful of everyone
  • Being dishonest, or at least easily dishonest when they run into some kind of challenge
  • Fall into some addiction, chemical or behavioral
  • Become isolated. Introverted people tend to isolate
  • Become very active. Extraverted people tend to talk a lot
  • Fall into depression
  • Fall into a generalized anxiety
  • Take some kind of radical action
  • Take some kind of radical philosophical or religious orientation

To avoid these unfortunate accommodations, what can people do to move from surviving to thriving?

Positive coping mechanisms

  • Without a doubt, the most important thing for a person to do when he or she has faced with the trauma that caused the person to survive is to face the trauma and understand that they were in a dangerous or untenable situation and they did what they needed to do to survive. This takes away the false guilt of being a bad person.
  • Grieve the loss of what happened. This is easier said than done. It is hard enough to face the violence of sexual abuse or any other kind of abuse. It is much harder to face traumata that occurred over a longer period of time or traumata that occurred to one’s family or one’s heritage. How will Palestinians cope with the trauma of being assaulted? How Israelis cope with their traumata? How will Black people face the trauma of slavery that occurred for 300 years and the aftermath of racism for another 100 years?
  • Most people need a confident, which could be a good friend, family member, therapist, or clergy person to do this kind of grief work.
  • Slowly replace surviving words and activities with thriving activities.
    • Being more honest
    • Being more trusting
    • Taking a chance with some activity like work school, friends
    • Facing and overcoming addictions whatever they may be
    • Finding a community of people who have moved from surviving to thriving

I wish you a time when you can achieve a life of thriving, which of course, will be imperfect. It will also be more honest, graceful, and peaceful. But it will also be sadder as you see that you lose things every day and have disappointments every day.

And I wish you a wonderful holiday season.

First Things First

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, men's issues, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

Over the last few days I have had the privilege of visiting with several men who presented with complex situations in their lives:

  • Sam is in the midst of an extended legal/court/attorney situation where there are problems with his wanting to have joint custody with children and a fair settlement with his former wife regarding their joint property in addition to her reportedly violating several court orders regarding money and custody. Oh yes, he weighs 300-plus pounds and would like to lose weight. He admits to having no friends
  • Jim is a professional person and good at his profession but quite dissatisfied with his current position and seeking to change positions. Additionally, he is in a long-term, largely unsatisfactory marriage with someone who has not contributed anything to the family income but has used thousands of dollars of their joint account to fund several failed businesses. Jim also faces some challenges with contacts with his two adult children and his grandchildren
  • Ben is quite overwhelmed in life, so he tells me leading to a “breakdown” that he had over the weekend. He just “can’t get all done that needs to be done” and he falls into despair, depression, anxiety, and occasional anger as he attempts to migrate through these challenging waters. He is in graduate school, a couple classes being very demanding. He is working about half time. He has a wife and house. And he works a bit with the family business. Additionally, he will be taking a drug test soon due to his profession and has given up his daily dosage of pot to pass the test, which increases his anxiety.
  • Mack has been dissatisfied with his job for some time, mostly because his subordinates and co-workers are not as efficient and can’t seem to take his directions. He has had some trouble with his girlfriend. As a result he has been anxious and irritable
  • Paul is a professional person who has found himself in a position of making a lot of money but not being satisfied with the work, which used to be quite rewarding. Additionally, he has been in an unsatisfactory marriage for many years. He admits to having no friends.
  • Peter, a pastor, has found himself in his retirement under a huge burden of debt, much of due to his lifelong tendency to say “yes” to his wife on buying and traveling. He wants to be in the pulpit again but at his age, this seems impossible. He has great trouble with his computer in order to get some kind of exact accounting of their indebtedness and payment schedule.
  • 40 years ago I was in a dilemma of having financial, professional, and interpersonal challenges in the midst of some very important things that I needed to for my kids.

 

I have seen many people with similar dilemmas during my years of practice, almost all of them men because I just see men in my practice. In all of these cases these men have felt overwhelmed in some way and unable to progress through the complexities of their lives. I have often found that it is valuable for me to help these men do “first things first.” But what does that mean? Does it mean having a list to go through every day following the necessary things? Does it mean giving up on one or more of these challenges? Does it mean complaining more?  Does it mean that the best way to cope with these challenges is to engage in some kind of addiction? None of above. It means doing the right thing. Whatever that means. Maybe I can help these men find ways to do the right thing by doing “first things first.” This means discovering what is most important to do and finding a way to do it.

 

What is most important?

This is the first and most important question to answer, but discovering what is most important is not always easy to do. It is not easy to do because there is always a good deal of emotion related to the many things that a person feels the need to do. Sometimes, people have fallen into necessities and opportunities without thinking clearly, and as a result have bitten off more than they can chew. More often, things just happen, sometimes from oneself, sometimes from someone else, and sometimes from circumstances themselves. We all felt the pressure of Covid restrictions and associated fear for three years running, and no one was immune to Covid and the fears associated with this disease.

 

Making a tally of what needs to be done is the first task. This might be as simple as writing down the things that require attention or numbering them in your mind. The difficulty of this procedure is that if you “hold them in your mind,” you will likely fall into some kind of anxiety or anger that is not helpful. Better, is for you to write these things down, leave the list alone for a while and then look at it occasionally for a few days. Writing a list may relieve your mind a bit. When you fall back into feeling overwhelmed and worried, you can say to yourself something like, “I’ll find the right thing to do and then do it? In the meantime, you need to muse about how important each of these things is. You might discover that something big isn’t really important while something small seems to be much more important. You might discover that something that looks like it will take a lot of time might be really important or not really important, whereas something that might take you minutes is important or not so important. You don’t decide these things. You discover them. If you approach this process of looking at what is important, you will discover that something needs to be done today and something else doesn’t really need to be done at all. Furthermore, you might discover that what really needs to be done is something that you really don’t want to do. That can present a challenge because this process is discovering the right thing for you to do is difficult

 

Doing the right thing

How do you decide what the “right thing” is? You don’t “decide.” You “discover”. What in the world does this mean? It means what I just said:”

  • You think of all the things you need to do
  • You write them down
  • You leave the list alone for a couple days
  • You then look at it occasionally
  • You note how you feel when you look at each item
  • You discover that one or two things stare you in the face, like saying, “I need to do this,” perhaps, “I need to do this whether I want to do it or not.”
  • You grieve. Really?

 

Yes, really. You grieve. Deb and I wrote a whole book on grieving, The Positive Power of Sadness, in which we discussed the centrality of grieving. We talked about “big sads,” i.e. things that were terribly sad and “small sads,” things that were difficult but not terrible. So, when you discover (not decide, remember) what you need to do, you will need to grieve what you don’t do. Or, when you do something that you have discovered to be really important, you will see that you can’t do something that you might really want to do but isn’t as important to be done, at least at this moment of time in your life. This grieving, i.e. just feeling sad, is essential if you are to proceed with doing the right thing. There is a tendency, especially for people of a certain personality type or temperament, to “re-think” what should be done, but this is usually a delay tactic that your brain conjures up to prevent you from grieving. Your brain would much rather that you be somewhat happy doing nothing than doing something that you don’t want to do that really needs to be done. This is a place a lot of worriers find themselves: stuck in hopes and dreams but not in reality. Hopes and dreams are wonderful, and I am all for them, but there comes a time when you have to discover what the right thing to do is.

 

You will not be successful in getting advice from friends on what you should do. You might have people in your life that think you’re lazy or work too much or don’t work enough. They also have their own values, and hence things that are important to you might not be important to you. So, if you seek counsel from friends, make sure you say that you just want to talk, that you don’t want their advice.

 

Then you do something. And, as has been said by many fine and wise people, you will be right or you will be wrong. More likely, you will be mostly right and slightly wrong. You assess what you have done and it will soon be obvious: I did the right thing, the wrong thing, or a bit of both.

 

So what happened to the guys I talked about?

  • Sam has discovered that he needs to fight the good fight for joint custody of his children. All else, including his weight, smoking, and drinking need to be tackled at another time. He simply has too much stress with the kids/custody thing to put any effort in correcting his diet and habits.
  • Jim quit his job, found a different position making a lot less money, and moved out of town. He just emailed me, and I was glad to hear from him because when I last saw him almost a year ago, he was pretty stuck. I hope he can now face his marriage and find comfort in what he discovers there.
  • Ben has decided that he has to focus on finishing his degree, which primarily means that he has to put the time into doing this very difficult course even though he would much rather do something else. He told me he has only a month to go before the course is over and he will be putting all his effort into doing it. His marriage, his drinking, his pot, and all the rest will have to rest.
  • Mack has found a way to accept that he is smarter than the people he works with but does not have a feeling of superiority. He has found a way to look at his work knowing that he probably will eventually need to have his own business (he has some experience), but now is not the time. His girlfriend is now in therapy and they are better for all the changes they have made
  • Paul is a guy I’ve just seen for a month or two. The last time he came in to see me, he said that he was feeling a bit better, that he has begun to have a sense of who he is and how he can mature emotionally. His job, money, and marriage have not changed, but his perspective has.
  • Peter remains pretty stuck in his situation. He yet focuses on his medical conditions and those of his wife, frankly because it is easier to do than focus on himself and what he needs to do. He did say recently that he had a new way of looking at his marriage, i.e. to look at what his wife felt rather than what he thought. I hope for more maturity.
  • When I focused on my kids, i.e. finding a way to have joint custody, I felt better, and the other matters of my life slowly and consistently improved. But that is a short answer. We need a cup of coffee and a conversation to hear more.