Thanks To Facebook And Twitter And politics, we are having a rash of rash conclusions about what should be going on in the world. Last night I heard on Fox News that oxycontin was responsible for drug deaths and was falsely promoted by the drug company as a safe drug that could be taken for pain in increasing amounts and was responsible for a rash of deaths due to people becoming addicted to the drug implying that nobody should be-be taking the drug even reasonably for moderate pain relief. The speaker was completely sure that nobody should have access to the drug even if they suffered from intolerable pain without it. Needless to say that this speaker was very confident about his conclusions but he had totally left out the other side of the story since it didn’t affect him. Opinion-oriented presentations can lead to one-sided presentations and to making decisions that affect people who are not misusing the drug and who can’t receive massive amounts of drugs under current prescription laws and who wouldn’t ever try to get them from the black market.
I am one of those patients. I have neuropathy due to spinal stenosis and even though I was successfully operated on many years ago to prevent me from becoming a quadriplegic; I still had some neuropathy which initially developed before the surgery which still exists and persists. I am on medication for this but it is limited in what it can do and it has progressed so there are times when the pain is intolerable and the medication for the neuropathy can’t control it. I also take over the counter pain medications with my doctor’s knowledge but there are times when neither medication can control the symptoms and there are times when I feel like I could wind up in the emergency room which is some distance away and an intolerably long ambulance ride because I can’t take the symptoms which involve spasms and burning pain. I receive a limited amount of oxycontin which I cautiously use for this but not every time it happens which can be every day, but I limit it by what I might have to do that day and what I can tolerate.
I fortunately or unfortunately have had oxycontin before after a couple of surgeries and in one case developed intractable constipation and loss of time where I thought a long period of time had passed and it only was a few minutes. I had a pump that time which was supposed to limit how much of the drug I got but it was too much for me and on top of that it seemed to me that nobody was checking on me either.
To me, it seemed that presentation was made by a “smart aleck” that thought he knew what he was talking about, but who had not really covered the subject or investigated what he was told or read somewhere and who could be responsible for a group of people who might not abuse the drug not getting the pain relief that they needed and would cause needless suffering.
It seems to me that people often promote ideas about things that will not have a direct effect on them rather carelessly and often from a dictatorial point of view being that most dictators tell others what to do when they themselves will suffer no direct effects from their own commands.
Sometimes when people say that they are telling you something you should know for your own good, maybe it really is for their own good. Maybe they tell you that you should change something about yourself for your own good when really its something that is for their own good, not yours? “Janey, you should quit talking so much and stop monopolizing the conversation”, when really they are the one who wants to monopolize the conversation and they want you to shut up and let them completely take over. Worse yet they can compliment you about something you are wearing or about a new hairstyle when obviously it doesn’t flatter you at all. Then your best friend can be your worst enemy. How do you tell the difference between one and the other?
Also less lethal but still misleading is a friend-enemy who may monopolize the choice of the next store to go to on “Black Friday” or acts like she is being the most helpful when you are deciding where to eat. It is always presented as the most logical choice but over time you or others don’t get to go where they might have planned to go. If you kept score, how many times did they get their choice while you or others did not get theirs? Maybe you had hoped to have Chinese and to top it off it might have even been your birthday and you didn’t get to have your choice for whatever reason your “friend” gave. Then if you begin to feel slightly angry over time, your friend will have a reason why you shouldn’t feel bad and it makes you look and feel like an oversensitive slob.
Could your friend be a little narcissistic and even insensitive? Not that you could say anything about them or to them. The only remedy often seems to be a little bit narcissistic or insensitive yourself. Often you spend too much time being codependent and meeting other people’s needs and may even have difficulty recognizing your own needs. “Let’s invite Judy (that’s you) to the party, I’m sure she’ll bring the food and even make the decorations.” Whoops, isn’t something going “wrong” there? Maybe the party wasn’t your idea and you had something else planned. But you get coopted!
Haven’t you heard that before? Is it really the devil or are there self-defeating thought patterns that cause you to make a mistake, a big mistake.
Then when you are fired, have a traffic accident for which you are considered to be a fault, or blow it somehow and lose a relationship, you are initially entirely mystified as to how you could have fallen into that predicament and until the shock wears off, you are thinking, “Hey, what did I get into? How did that happen? Who, me?”
When the initial blankness wears off, next you face the consequences which can be overwhelming. “Me, how did I get pregnant?” “How will it change my life?” “What happened to my car?” “Is anyone hurt besides possibly me? Will I lose my license? How will I ever find another job with this on my record?”
Decisions may also have to be made at the moment which you might or might not regret later. You can possibly become defensive and whatever the consequences of your decisions you can and will defend them. You can then can become “Mr. or Ms. Neverever Wrong” and this too can prevent you from learning from your mistakes.
You may also have to come to some conclusions which you may regret later. Did you intend to do it or did the devil make you do it? You don’t have to be Christian to think this, but it helps. You may say that you won’t have any regrets because whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault and get yourself lost in denial even if it is not what actually is found to have happened. Sometimes reality can become really, really hazy when this happens.
You can see how your self-concept can keep you from seeing or acknowledging your mistakes and how valuable life lessons can be lost this way. Recently I had a conflict with a friend and lost my relationship with her. I didn’t know it at the time that the heat was getting to her worse than I knew and I was more concerned about my own ability to handle it. I learned, as much as I didn’t like it, that I was not acknowledging the signs she was giving me about her own deteriorating physical wellbeing.
I had had a long-ago lesson ( that pertains to the above situation) where an aunt of my husband’s who was helping me get my baby to the doctor in a far away city didn’t really want to do it and I learned that she really wanted me to read her mind when she said, “Yes” and she really meant, “No”. I was hurt when I found out that she felt I had taken advantage of her and was mad about it.
My husband’s aunt got really mad at me like my friend was when she had heat prostration. I learned that I had to read minds and therefore read between the lines when I was in certain situations even when I was not told something. It initially exasperated me, but I eventually got the hint. It was a very expensive lesson when I also learned that my friend and also a close friend of hers were very mad at me and did not want to communicate with me. Again they felt that I had taken advantage of her and was insensitive.
I certainly was part of the problem; but what if I considered that the devil made me do it. I am sure he would be happy creating conflict among people and making them behave less like a Christian. In the Lord’s prayer is the line,”and lead us not into temptation”. We need to keep on our guard as hurt feelings and confusion are a potentially bad mix. It has caused me a lot of grief. Can you conceive of the devil enjoying this?. I can think that is what God meant when he gave Christians this part of the Lord’s Prayer.
For a long time I was very rational about this part of the Lord’s Prayer and I didn’t think I needed pray it because I always knew what I was doing; but then sometime’s I made some dumb mistakes. For example, one was making a left-turn onto a four lane highway holding my fast food that I had just bought in one hand. I totaled my new car and wound up driving a used Cadillac. I always wanted a Cadillac but not that way. Who was at fault? me? God? or the Devil?
Also sometimes I have been very dense and as a result get caught in the same situation over and over. Was it my fault or the devil’s fault? I felt very strongly that I had to solve my own problems and often was confused in certain situations when I did not catch onto to what others’ wanted of me. I knew I was not meeting their standard’s but I did not know why. I was not getting their hints; but it was not malice on my part.
I have a little true story about me that illustrates this that I might have used in some other of my posts. My lady supervisor at a clinic told me that I had an odor problem. This was confusing to me because I was a regular bath taker, used deodorant, frequently changed my clothes, and washed those that needed it or sent them to the cleaners. Needless to say, I immediately either washed all my clothes or had them cleaned; but the odor persisted. It was very embarrassing and the staff felt like that I had some kind of problem that I wouldn’t admit like to being homeless or living in a dive and had no plumbing. Later I figured out that it was a perfume that I was wearing that didn’t mix well with my body chemistry. I stopped wearing it. Problem solved. But that never did connect with what the staff was thinking.
As a Christian, I latter learned to call on God especially for problems that I couldn’t solve and not to entirely depend on myself and view it was some kind of a test that I might fail. I felt that the devil always won in these cases. I had failed some kind of a test. I did in an indirect way (I didn’t ask for help); but I think I either had some kind of lesson to learn or I was inadvertently making the devil happy. Often it is the little things that bring us down. I don’t think the devil likes us to be happy, without serious worries, and confident that we are okay. What do you think?
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Men do what women consider to be gross things and some men go so far as to think that women are asking for it. Ugh (my comment as a woman). Ick! Men like to think that women think like them. It makes it easier for them to sexually harass women because then they can think that women are asking for it. This makes it easier for them to do things to or in front of women that are actually disgusting to most women.
I have been shown Play Boy center foldouts and asked to be present when a psychiatrist does a physical exam on male patients so I could do the mental exam. I was not a nurse or physician. I have been invited back to see a therapist that I had seen so I could let him know how I was doing. I opened the door and he had set up his office so that I could join him on the floor and make out. Where had I gone wrong or where had they gone wrong. I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. I am telling you this because I shouldn’t have felt ashamed and kept this quiet for many years. Where did these men come off by doing this? P.S. I was also groped on the Grey Hound bus by the guy seated next to me when I was trapped by him in the window seat.
Men can spend hours talking about women who they think have led men astray. Maybe it was the other way around. Women’s reputations have been tarnished this way. Men’s reputations are not tarnished this way, they are seemingly enhanced. If women fooled around as much as men think they do, they wouldn’t have time for anything else. Most women usually have so much to do involving working, taking care of the home, and caring for children, when would they have time? When could they sneak away to do this?
I think most of this goes on often only in men’s minds and they think that women must think like they do. If this is so, then they think they are justified in acting on it. If a man is running around on a woman, then he often thinks that she must want to do the same. This then justifies their wanting to do it more.
This does not forgive women who use their sexuality to entrap men and use them. This has led to men (especially in conservative circles) not wanting to be alone with women unless their husband is around or they are with a group. What do you think? I think most women will say that they would “like” to be with a certain movie star or music star, but often that is far as it goes.
Often women have trouble accepting their sexual attractiveness and they sometimes “dress down” and use little or no makeup because of this. This can spoil whatever appropriate sexual relations that they have with a man with the women not feeling sexually attractive or even sexually attracted to their partners. Women’s sexuality is often fragile and easily tainted this way. While many men have rehearsed the sexual act both in their minds and in actual self-stimulation. Having sexual thoughts seems to be more acceptable for men.
There is a form of child sexual abuse where a mother may flaunt her sexuality in front of her young son both by having open sexual relations with a man in front of him and by displaying her body to him by having little or no clothes on. This can lead to fondling of the child by tempting the boy to touch her and cuddle with her?!
Education is important. We need to know what is appropriate and not appropriate in the sexual realm. No education does not keep children and some grownups safe and sound. Ignorance is not bliss in many cases. When it is found inappropriate, the victims should know that they should speak up and to whom they can do it. When I was harassed above, I initially had no idea of what to do, I felt shamed, and I kept the secret to myself for a long time.
Notice there are no pictures illustrating this post. I do not want to promote anything by having what might be considered sexually explicit pictures.
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