Self-Awareness

Are All Men Selfish?

Ron Johnson appreciation, Children, communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, men's issues, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

What an outrageous question, right? This is just as outrageous as my previous blog about “women never admit that they’re wrong.” This equally outrageous statement about men is not made in jest because men are frequently accused of being selfish, particularly by the women in their lives. I think there is something very important in this question because there is a certain truth to the statement that all men are selfish, or at least look selfish. We will examine several things in this blog, not the least of which are related to my last blog about women seemingly having a difficult time admitting that they’re wrong. Let’s examine what “selfish” means, especially as it compares to narcissism. We will look at the positive aspect of selfishness, the negative aspect of it, and the very opposite of selfishness, selflessness, which can be good and not so good. Then let’s look at how men operate, at least for the most part, that makes them look selfish and act selfish.

What is selfishness?

This is an unfortunate word that has creeped into the English vocabulary over the recent decades, perhaps centuries. On the surface selfish means one is oriented towards oneself. So, at least at this level, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with being selfish if it means that he (or she; but let’s stay with “he” for now) is aware of himself and looks at the world as a person who is independent from everyone else. John Donne said, “Every man is an island to himself” 400 years ago, but Donne’s intent was to deal with the isolation that so many people feel. So, we could say that there is at least some value in being selfish while there is a danger. This will be the main point I wish to convey in this essay. In other words, you need to know who you are in order to do anything in the world.

This “knowing who you are” ideally coms early in life, starting about age two but blossoming during the years 2-5 or 6. These toddler and early childhood years when ideally the person has received the security, nurturance, and comfort one needs during the first year or two of life, and is now ready to engage in the social world. The heart of “self” as we discuss it in psychology is having a sense of security that can only come from a secure environment. So, if the infant has received these basic three elements (security, nurturance, and comfort), s/he will be able to then bridge safely and confidently into the world. And this is very important because the rest of the world will not provide these three basic elements. The individual needs to find a way to find his or her (now let’s just go with “his”) way in life by his own wits. This is the positive aspect of “selfishness,” i.e. knowing who you are and going through the rigors of the toddler/early childhood years when you still think that you should have everything you want. You don’t know that at age, say, four, your wants have accelerated 100-fold while your needs have stayed the same: security, nurturance, and comfort. During infancy your wants were quite simple as they were essentially needs, i.e. food and safety. So the positive essence of selfishness is having sense of self, where I provide most of my security, nurturance, and comfort. I look out to not fall off a cliff or run in front of a car, I feed myself, and I take care of myself for the most part. I should not need the same amount of comfort as a 4-year old that I needed as a one-year old. But what happens when I don’t get my infantile needs met? I remain “self-less.”

The two aspects of selflessness

Unfortunately, many people do not adequately receive these three basic elements in infancy and are not prepared to engage the world that does not care for them as their parents did…or should have done. When this happens, the individual (we’re talking mostly about men, so let’s use the masculine pronoun from here on) does not have the groundwork to enter the years 2-6 where he needs to find himself, be himself, and exert himself in order to make it in the world. If the person does not get a foundation in infancy, particularly of safety, nurturance, and comfort, he will not be ready for the journey that begins in these early childhood years and never ends. Such a person will then be seeking these basic infantile needs from other people, or perhaps by some kind of addictive substance or behavior to give him a sense of self. Chemical addictions give the man an artificial sense of self as he finds a chemical way to feel safe and productive. Behavioral addictions do the same thing because they give the man a sense of purpose: gamble (and hopefully make a million dollars) or work all the time, and hence give the man a sense of safety, eat excessively (and serve the need for nurturance), or engage in some form of sexual addiction (and give the man a sense of comfort). All of these addictions are attempts to find a sense of self because the man didn’t have an adequate sense of self when he was four.

The other aspect of selflessness is what we normally think of with the term: a tendency to take care of others and serve the world. People who do, indeed, focus their lives on service can be people who have a good sense of self, so good, in fact that they forget about themselves in their charitable work. People who are truly generous are people who have a good sense of self, so good that they are able to spend hours or dollars without needing or seeking any kind of reward beyond the satisfaction and pleasure of taking care of people or the world in some way. My first therapist and life’s mentor, Dr. Vernon Grounds, was such a person. He had a very solid sense of self, so solid that he didn’t have to prove himself to anyone and could spend 18 hours a day caring for people like me and other students and faculty in the seminary where he was president and professor.

These are two distinct kinds of selflessness but they can seem to appear together, which actually never happens. Many people who are apparently quite generous and positively selfless are seeking approval and attention. They have not found the intrinsic value of giving and the satisfaction of improving the world in some way. Many good men work too much and give too much because they are unable to say “no” to the needs of the world, often the seeming needs of people in their lives. True positive selflessness is demonstrated by the man who “let his nay be nay and his aye be aye.” In other words, the man who can say no just as easily as he can say yes. Many men struggle with this.

Selfishness and narcissism

Deb and I wrote a chapter in a book a few years back where we unpacked the word narcissism. Unfortunately, in contemporary society, this term has been used to a fault and without a real understanding of what the word narcissism means and what narcissism comes from. In our paper we proposed that there is a natural narcissism and an extensive of natural narcissism into adult life. On the surface narcissism seems to suggest that the individual is selfish, i.e. cares only about himself and thinks only about his own needs and wants. There is some truth to this with people who we might dare to call narcissistic, but there is great danger in using this word without knowing what natural narcissism is.

Natural narcissism, or childhood narcissism is what we have been discussing in the 2-6 year old time of life where I have the opportunity to develop a sense of self so that I can effectively engage the world. So, the 4-year old is “narcissistic” because he is looking to get his needs and wants met (even though he doesn’t really distinguish wants and needs). Then he meets some kind of resistance or limitation, puts up a fuss, and finds a way to get around the limitation, or hopefully adjust to the limits of life. This finding and fighting limits during these early childhood years is where most people fail in personal development. They either continue to fight so much that the world around them (usually parents) give into him, go their own way and trust no one, or they give up trying and find ways to accommodate to what everyone wants of them. Ideally, the boy finds a way to accept some limits and challenge others in such a way that he learns that he can have want he needs but not necessarily what he wants. What generates out of this crucial time of life is that the individual develops a sense of self from which he can engage the world successfully. When the boy has been indulged with getting too much of what he wants, he will continue to retain the natural narcissism of childhood into adulthood. If he has not been given enough freedom and encouragement together with appropriate limitations, he will also retain a narcissistic view of life but hold onto the belief that he needs to find the right place, people, and parental substitutes to give him what he wants. These are two different forms of narcissism in adult life, one “selfish” (I get what I want by demand), and one “selfless” (I’ll never get what I want so I have to depend on others to give it to me).

The bottom line is that adult narcissism is not selfishness so much as it is a lack of self, namely a self that knows that he can get what he needs, mostly by his own hands, but he can’t get most of what he wants because we all, quite simply, want more than we can have. These are the two holes that so many people fall into: I have a right to get what I want all the time or I have to find people to give me what I want. Most men tend to fall into the former group. Most women tend to fall into the second group. Both forms of narcissism are dead ends in life. But before we end this diatribe on selfishness, let’s look at another aspect of men’s apparent selfishness that has more to do with their independent nature…to a fault.

Independence to a fault

There is an interesting passage in Genesis, chapter 3 where God speaks to the metaphorical characters Adam and Eve after they have discovered the difference between good and evil when they ate the forbidden fruit from one tree. God said that the man would “work by the sweat of his brow,” in other words working hard. God said to the woman that she “would look to the man.” We dealt a bit with the “looking to the man” with women in our last blog. Notably, in this same chapter God said that he kept them from eating from the Tree of Life. We might conjecture that had Adam and Eve been more obedient to the limits (of childhood?), that they would have matured into Life more successfully. Regardless as to whether you believe this story as fact or myth, or disbelieve its value altogether, it does provide an interesting view of what a male needs to do in life: work. Carol Gilligan in a marvelous piece of psychological literature suggested that women are more naturally “communal” while men are more naturally “agenic.” This means that men might be more inclined to do their own thing while women being more inclined to do something with someone else, often with the man. Some biblical theologians have suggested that in Genesis 1, where Adam and Eve are created together, both worked side by side and both were communal, but in Chapter 3 these dimensions of humankind were separated. Let’s leave the Bible and go into how men actually operate with this work thing.

I propose that it is more natural for men to be independent and women to be more communal. Note that I do not suggest that women are the opposite of independent, i.e. dependent, but rather that they are more communal. We discussed the value and angers of communality in the previous blog, namely women tending to tell men what to do in an attempt to find communality. But the men’s side of the phenomenon here is their tendency to be independent to a fault, i.e. do what they want without regard for the other people in their lives, especially the women in their lives. Let me give you some examples.

Jack is an independent guy. He, like most of the men who come to my office, came with the figurative “female handprint in his back,” namely because his wife thought that he had some kind of problem. I talked about Jack’s wife in my last blog, but here I want to talk about Jack. He has been a successful tradesman and businessman for many years and has been in various businesses over time largely because he works hard and he works smart. Unfortunately for Julia, his wife, she has not always been a part of his business decisions and directions. He has, simply stated, gone on his merry way doing what he has thought is the right thing to do. And he has done quite well as he has looked at the business landscape. The difficulty with Jack, as he relates to Junie, is not his work or his decisions, but he going on with it on his own. Nothing wrong with doing things that seem right to you, but if you’re in a marriage where your wife wants to be a part of your life, you might want to converse with her about what you’re planning to do. This just doesn’t occur to Jack. Hence, his wife sees him as “selfish,” or worse yet narcissistic. There is a lot of truth her allegation but I have to be very careful with dealing with Jack’s independence because he has taken care of himself all of his life and has never really trusted anyone.

Sam is quite like Jack, i.e. independent to a fault. A physician, he has also chosen many directions in life, some having to do with his profession, some having to do with his philosophical and theological orientation to the world. He has spent thousands of dollars, much of it unwisely, investing in one thing or another but hasn’t consulted with his wife about these decisions. She sees him as selfish and narcissistic. Like Jack, he does not have a good sense of self and has, indeed, been independent because he needed to be that way to survive the shaming father in his life. Unfortunately, now he has also suffered the shaming of his wife who doesn’t know any way of dealing with the fact that he doesn’t consult her on his decisions.

Jack and Sam are representations of many men who have this biblical directive, “work by the sweat of your brow” without knowing that they are doing it. It just doesn’t occur to men who are exceedingly independent that there is a danger of going it alone. There is nothing wrong with independence, just as there is nothing wrong with communality, but there are dangers in both.

Dealing with men’s selfishness

  • Point one: value your orientation to life as an independent entity. You are good at doing your own thing and good at taking responsibility for your successes and failure
  • Realize that independence to a fault is selfishness, built on a lack of a clear sense of self. If you re in this category, you must find a way to get a better foundation of your self that is not only what you do and not only doing something on your own.
  • Admit to your significant other, or if you don’t have one, to a trusted friend, what you think, what you feel, and how you look at what you do in life. You will find that you don’t so much need advice as communality, i.e. a feeling of togetherness.
  • If you’re a person, say, a woman in this independent man’s life, tell him how you feel. Don’t tell how you feel about him. Tell him you miss him, enjoy his company, and enjoy hearing about what he does and where he’s going in life. He doesn’t know that he needs you, that he needs someone in life. Be careful to avoid telling him what he should do. Instead, tell him that you love him and want to be more a part of his thinking, feeling, and doing.  By the way, you got together with him in the first place because you liked his independence.

References

Gilligan, Carol. In a different voice.

Johnson and Brock, I want to tell you how I feel

Johnson, blog: “Why Good Men Lie”

Do Women Ever Admit That They’re Wrong?

Ron Johnson communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, love, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

Do Women Ever Admit That They’re Wrong? What an outrageous question, it must seem. I would never have thought of asking such a question, which of course, is not a question, but rather a rhetorical question suggesting that women don’t ever admit that they’re wrong. This rhetorical question came to me from the even more outrageous statement underneath it when he frankly said, “I don’t think women ever admit that they’re wrong. It made me think, and the more I think, I have come to believe that there is some important truth in this statement, however outrageous it sounds. Let me discuss a number of things that might relate the thinking that many (certainly not all) women don’t seem to admit to ever being wrong. I want to start with a short essay on the whole concept of being “wrong.” I will discuss some cases that I have had over my years, some very recently, some many years ago where I encountered women who couldn’t seem to see, much less admit that they had done or said things wrong. Then I want to consider possible causes of this phenomenon, how men contribute or perhaps even cause this phenomenon, how women indeed know that they are wrong but fail to communicate that fact, and finally what men and women might be able to do in order to deal with this phenomenon.

What does “wrong” mean?

There are at several ways of understanding the simple word “wrong”:

  • Saying or doing something that you determine is wrong
  • Saying or doing something that someone else says is wrong
  • Doing the right thing despite there being a law against it (like Gandhi challenging British rule in India and MLJ challenging white rule in the South)
  • Doing something that is right one day and wrong the next or vice versa
  • Doing something that is wrong even though you didn’t know it was wrong
  • Doing something wrong because you don’t know how to do it right
  • And probably lots of other kinds of “wrong”

Examples

Most of my practice is devoted and dedicated to men, namely performing psychological evaluations with men, helping men understand and communicate themselves, and generally helping men be better men, fathers, husbands, workers, and friends. A modest amount of my work is with couples, some of whom I have seen off and on for years, some of whom I saw just once or twice, and some of whom I have more recently seen. Positions, ages, and other identifications of these people have been changed but I have endeavored to keep the essence true to the people as well as this outrageous consideration that women can’t admit that they’re wrong.

Jim is a pastor, which his wife, Patty, has been largely pastor’s wife with all the duties that that role requires, mother, housewife, and grandmother. These folks, both people of immaculate character, originally came to see me some 25 years ago, worked with Deb and me collectively and individually for a few years and then didn’t return until a couple of years ago. I won’t describe the marital challenges that were presented but theirs was not the terrible phenomenon of yelling and screaming that sadly so often typifies unhappy marriages. They had, however, not found a way to actually understand each other and deal with much that was truly in need of repair, both individually and then collectively. Importantly, Jim suffered a modest amount of sexual abuse as a child even though he came from a pretty good hard working farm family (the abuser was a coach and relative of the family). Patty came from a very repressive family where emotions were almost never spoken and her mother was probably schizophrenic as well as frequently threatening suicide. When Jim told Patty that he loved her during their later dating years, she said that she didn’t “understand why” he would say something, then saying that she had never heard such a statement from anyone. There has been much that we have discussed during our recent hours together but perhaps the most common talk has been that while this pastor has been in very significant pastoral and administrative positions, he has failed to keep Patty informed as to their consistently declining financial status to the point that they would file bankruptcy aside from his ethical/moral reaction against that action. He continued to feel terribly ashamed of what he has done over these years, much of which has been to afford Patty way too much liberty in spending, both on herself, traveling to be with her adult children, and giving to her children and grandchildren. So, as a result, much of our conversation has had to deal with Jim’s feeling bad about his lack of financial scrutiny and Patty’s disappointment in him. I once asked her if she felt any responsibility of the excessive expenditures, many of which came at her hands. Her response: “I left all the financial matters to Jim,” which meant that she took no responsibility for their financial dilemma. We might call this a bit of old school mother/housewife view of money, but it turned out to be more than that the more I questioned Patty. We might call this kind of “wrong” one where the person (Patty) didn’t actually know that it was irresponsible of her to spend money that they really didn’t have. Hearing Patty’s taking no responsibility knowing how much money they had in the bank, I asked her if she could tell me of any time where she had been wrong. To my immense surprise, she said that she couldn’t think of such a time. I heard, “Of course, I know that I am a sinner,” but this was soon qualified when I asked her if she could actually think of a “sin” that she had committed. She couldn’t think of one. This still amazes me, but I know that Patty worked diligently and successfully not only keeping all her feelings to herself but being carefully guarded on “not doing anything wrong” when she was growing up so as not to disturb her mother.

This might seem like an extreme case, but it is not. I have often found that women can admit to “not being imperfect and making mistakes” on the one hand but not being able to admit to anything specific that they said or do that was untoward.

Jan and Sam came to me recently, but more accurately, Jan came to me voluntarily and Sam came to me with the proverbial female hand in his back as he entered my office. Jan’s complaint was that Sam simply did a lot of things without her knowledge, much less approval. She noted that he made a “major change in profession” that affected the family finances (positively, have you) but he hadn’t informed her of the change. Sam, like many men is exceedingly independent having grown up in a family where he was ignored and rejected by his stepfather, so he learned to do things on his own, quite successfully for the most part. Jan grew up in a family where “everything was perfect and the family was always first.” These differences having been said, what ensued (and is yet ensuing) is Jan’s singular interest in Sam’s “problems” while admitting that she “is not a perfect person, I know.” When I do an intake assessment on a couple, I meet first with the couple, and then individually with each partner, the latter meetings devoted to their individual social histories. But in this case, Jan evidently informed my secretary that “one hour simply won’t be enough” even though I usually can accomplish what I need to learn about one’s social background in an hour. When I met with Sam, we hardly needed the whole hour but I learned of his history, not nearly so much, however, about any kind of problem in the family, but how he coped with it. When I met with Jan, I couldn’t keep her on the topic of her life because she spent the entire hour talking about what was wrong with Sam, and because I needed a second hour regarding her own history, I had a hard time getting anything substantial because of her desire to tell me more things that were wrong about Sam including her concerted belief that he suffered greatly as a child and had “issues” because of the suffering. When I met with the two of them together to give an interpretation of my findings and the psychological test results, it was functionally impossible for Jan to admit to any kind of error, even the tendency she has of seeing only what was wrong with Sam. Again, I was amazed that she, a very intelligent professional person, couldn’t see that she might be a bit “wrong” in being overly critical.

I see another professional couple, the woman a physician and the man a successful salesman. Simply stated, I have had to work diligently to get the woman to see that she has any significant part in the breakdown of the marriage. Granted, the man, like so many men, has a tendency to get angry at a drop of the hat, but much of his anger is his wife’s relentless telling him what to do, what is wrong with him, and otherwise criticizing him. When I was recently with them, I couldn’t get by her saying, “I am only telling the truth. Why can’t he hear it? Why is he so “defensive?” Why is he “defensive,” I thought? Because you are criticizing him all the time. Interestingly, the woman admits that she has “an anxiety disorder,” but is unwilling for me to tackle the origin of that anxiety even though the origin is her obviously seriously dysfunctional family. She comes from a family where, like Jan with whom I just spoke, where she couldn’t say anything of how she felt, whereas the man comes from an alcoholic, angry family where he learned to drink and be angry from his father.

Enough about what is “wrong” with women not admitting that they’re ever wrong. What about the men in their lives?

The men who contribute to women’s inability to admit that they’re wrong

Most of this has to do with the fact that we men have not been raised in a social environment where we talked about feelings, particularly feelings that were hurt, disappointment, discouragement, and sadness. These words, and the important concept underneath these words, were simply not part of the male environment in which we were raised. The typical male environment is one of some kind of competition, often academic or athletic and sometimes social. It is very hard to be raised as an introverted boy because boys are supposed to be extraverted. It is hard for a boy to be in school where the 3 R’s are all hard for him. It is hard for a boy to be raised where he’s got the 3 R’s but not the athletic interest, much less the ability to play sports. And importantly, it is very common for the emotions of joy and anger to dominate a boy’s emotional environment, thus abandoning the emotions of fear and sadness. Girls grow up with fear and sadness all the time especially in middle school (junior high) and are not good at being angry. This social environment leads to men being openly angry with everyone potentially and women taking a more circuitous route of channeling anger into criticism, not unlike the drama and gossip they learned about in middle school.

So we have a kind of unconscious conspiracy among men and women with the whole business of feelings and the subcategory of emotions: men get angry and feel joy; women get sad and feel fear. Granted, this is a blanket statement, but more true than false. And when men really find sadness, they become profoundly depressed leading to the fact that men are six times more likely to suicide than women despite the fact that women are 10 times more likely to threaten suicide. And when men find fear, they are quite overwhelmed with it. When women find anger, they turn it into vitriol neglecting their own part in whatever the discussion was.

My work with men, which as I said is my primary work, is almost always about helping them know the breath of their feelings, like hurt and disappointment, and then the underlying emotion that is always sadness. I have heard many men say, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but….” And if I am really helpful with men, I help them conquer anger…entirely helping them understand that anger is always secondary behind hurt, disappointment, and sadness. And all of these feelings are based on something that one loves…and has lost. So, the task in helping women get over their seeming inability to admit to being wrong lies primarily with men getting over being angry all the time and admitting that they have a “love problem,” as I say, namely having lost something that he has loved but also having skipped the sadness that should always result from any loss.

My singular suggestion to women about being wrong is this: You might be “right” with what you see but wrong in saying it, which can then tend you to see primarily what is wrong with him more than what might be wrong with you.

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.