Are Opinions Based On Assumptions, Not Facts?
If you can not change a person’s assumptions with facts, then why argue with them. I someone thinks you are a “hypochondriac” and a “surgery addict”, what can you show them from your actual medical history that will change their mind? Nothing. What hurts too is that they also think “hypochondriacs” and “surgery addicts” are bad people.
Assumptions are just that assumptions and they can be extremely harmful if they are erroneous and associated with bad qualities in other people. “Oh, that’s just a woman for you” or “Oh, that’s just a man for you.” Doing this allows people to make quick judgments of other people without wasting time getting more information.
A debate is an academic activity where each side takes turns arguing one side of an argument. This can lead to a reasoned analysis of a situation both for and against. Lawyers often do this for a living depending whether they are working for the defense or the prosecution in a criminal trial.
More to come as I think this over. Most recent contribution from a friend. “Many people think that their opinions are facts!” This is why arguments and discussions can be so hard. Also, people often form “tribes” and identify with them like “Trump Supporters” and are threatened when a belief contrary to their tribe’s beliefs is presented to them by someone. They become anxious and even angry. Do you see why people often don’t talk about sports, politics and religion at the table?
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If You Don’t Want To Do It, Don’t Say, “Yes”, And Then “Gunny Sack” It!
Many people play games and if they win, they can say, “Gotcha.” This first happened to me when we had our first child and my husband’s aunt volunteered to come with me and the baby to a specialist in St.Louis. Later I learned from her that she was just being nice and didn’t really want to do it. Sometimes I can be very independent because of this Catch 22. Especially when it winds up in the gunny sack which will be opened up at a later date and used against me!
Also, beware of narcissistic sociopaths and borderline personality disorders as they can manipulate you too. You will wind up taking the blame and the perpetrator will wind up smelling like a rose and be one up on you too. For these people lying is their favourite sport. They like to see how easily they can take you in and leave you in the dumpster.
Worse yet they can cause your friends to think bad of you while they get accepted as the “real” victim, not you. Initially, they can get you to care about them and take their side, but they are just as phoney as a three dollar bill. You know how poison ivy can spread? This is worse because you can never get over it. Accomplished liars are good at telling the “truth” and leaving you, not them in the lurch, And if they are good enough, then they can take all your friends away and make them their friends!
They can use anything such as a “fake” conversion experience to get you to take their side initially and to be considered to be a loyal friend by your former friend or friends. “The devil made me do it,” is an honest reason for doing this but they would never admit it. A good liar manipulator is often so good at this because they don’t really have a conscience to bother them like you do.
A family member like this aimed to put her stepfather in the nursing home so she could inherit. A stroke of luck as she died before he did. Sometimes I feel life is a snake pit and you always have to be on the lookout for snakes which might bite you.
The fraudulent manipulators never seem to get the blame; they just get the goods and take off with them. It can be very difficult because you may be the only person that sees through them. Good Luck!
Quit Negating Yourself!
Ever say something to yourself about something you are wanting to have or do and immediately saying that it will never happen? and finish the job by saying Why it will never come to be? I do. Move over if you think you have ever done this, as I have done this too consistently.
Why you talk yourself right out of it and it doesn’t have a chance. Do you read about positive thinking and affirmations but figure they wouldn’t work for you anyway. And when they don’t work do you tell people that you tried but they don’t work for you and you have given up visualizations and vision boards. It only works for Oprah!
Have you ever dreamed up a special dress for a special occasion and worked on the idea changing things here and there in order to make it perfect? I planned and planned additions to my old house and yes we did use one of them. Later I started looking at double wides and multitudes of floor plans even visited many different sites so I could see the actual thing. Yes, I wound up with one when we had to move.
Now I feel frustrated because there are things about our doublewide now that I would like to fix. And my husband would like to add a garage-above ground storm shelter. Now I know what worked for me so I am going to do research and make plans for the needed addition and changes to the house. It still needs some windows replaced which on one occasion, I would like to change the old picture window for a bay window.
We often spend more time proving why something we want to do don’t work than we spend on why something could work.
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How Men And Women Differ On The Subject Of Sexual Harrassment
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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Are You Pineing For A Punk?
What First Attracts!
Are you pining for a punk? You might be if your story is part of the content of a scandal sheet. Being recently confined for illness, my friend gave me a buch of scandal sheets. Whether I knew them or not, I found a common theme, recent breakups and connections between famous people. They have everything, shouldn’t their relationships work out?
How they treat each other is outrageous! When under the influence of first Love, it appears that they can’t see straight! Faults are glossed over and relationships are formed immediately without much time to get to know the other person, faults and all. They have the ways and means with which to get over involved. Common sense goes out the window. When things come down crashing down (reality rears its ugly head), there is surprise and obvious grieving for something that wasn’t to be in the first place.
Falling in love is not supposed to be a revolving door. Test the waters and see if you want some more. In these relations ships, it is just too easy to leave and find someone else eager to be the new LOVE. Doing this seems to mean that the new person is some type of winner and not the loser they might be. Just because you are choosy doesn’t mean you are a loser because someday you might pick the winner and avoid messy relationships with people that don’t go anywhere.
FAME ATTRACTS!
Fame, money are very attractive. Yet somebody with a great talent may not have much to offer other than that. It is hard to mix that kind of glamourise life with success in the real world. Whatever attracted him or her to you might wear off and leave you high and dry. Cheating proliferates in this type of world and is supposed to be tolerated complete with possible STD’s.
The Missing Link
Relationships turn into a kind of a game with one-up-manships proliforating. Security does not exist and when a crisis occurs, the sufferer is usually left high and dry. What do you want a glamourse red carpet evening dress that you have to be sewn into or a practical comfortable attractive outfit that you can wear over and over? Relationships are that way too. Even though he or she is not to your taste and you are not his or her taste, doesn’t mean you are a failure. You both just avoided a big mistake.
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Shame The Great Manipulator, The Great Trap Of Unworthness
I was raised on shame. It was my claim to fame. I was not recognised for what I did well, but for those things I did not do so well. I was also convinced over time that I could not do them well and when that happened that people would give up on me. I thought there were only so many things in life that other people would approve of and that I was not capable of doing them well enough to make other people proud of me. I was recognised for what or where I could not meet up to other people’s standards and I felt like I was a great disappointment to my family so much so my relatives did not want other people to know that I was related to them.
I was so easily made to feel shameful that I was bullied, I was suicidal, and I was made to feel that I could never meet up to other people’s standards (of which there was only one set) and I would ultimately be rejected and thrown out on the street if that was possible. There was only one person to blame and that was me and I didn’t know any different.
Appropriate or Inappropriate? Wanted Or Unwanted?
Worse yet I realized that in sexually inappropriate situations the victim (that was me) was always the one who should feel ashamed and had something to hide instead of the reverse. Getting caught in a sexually compromising situation was something I should cover up, sneak out of, and pretend didn’t happen even though I now know it qualified as sexual abuse. It was something to be covered up and forgotten if possible.
Brene Brown with her doctorate in Social Work found that we have three shields that we can use as shields against shame. We can forget or not talk about what we see as a shameful situation. Men will tell you that they are not comfortable talking about certain things that happened to them as they were growing up or even later in life such as post-traumatic stress syndrome and even had pushed these things so far out of mind that they did not remember them.
Another shield against shame mentioned by Dr. Brown was appeasement. If someone is dissatisfied with you or something you have done, you try to make it up to them or make them so happy or satisfied in another way that they will forget that you did not or might not make them happy. Another word for this might be “brown nosing”.
Another possibility would be going towards or against the person or situation that makes you feel shameful and take it out aggressively toward them or it. This is the third shame shield mentioned by Dr. Brown. Could the liberal Democrats’ behaviour after the election of President Donald Trump be an example of this? Are they ashamed that their candidate did not win over such an unlikely candidate?
Sometimes our entire life can be motivated by shame and others can get what they want us to do by shaming us and can feel better about themselves by winning over us in this way. I have often felt that being a woman, especially a woman professional, made me a target for this sort of thing. If a woman can do it (what I did) it must be something easy to obtain and therefore not worth much. The step between someone with a Masters degree and a Ph.D. must be pretty easy if she can do it. I did not attend the graduation ceremonies when I received my doctorate (because it was not such a big deal)?
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A Visitor From The Past
I have been out sick for a week as I was visited by an old visitor from the past that I had thought I had outgrown. ASTHMA. Gasping for breath is scary; but even more frightening is hearing mysterious sounds as you lay in bed that nobody else can hear. As a psychologist, I know about hearing voices and these would even wake me up in the middle of the night. Once, I got admitted, I think the hospital staff must have thought I was crazy. This was a strange illness because I got very sick before I sought treatment. I did not run a temperature. I just got out of breath. Even my oxygen percentages were good. My heart rate was normal. I had just run out of steam. However, I was very relieved when they hooked me up with oxygen; pumped me up with steroids, and admitted me from the Emergency Room. Missed church that morning and didn’t get to celebrate Mother’s Day or should I say Grandmother’s Day.
Once, I got admitted, I think the hospital staff must have thought I was crazy. This was a strange illness because I got very sick before I sought treatment. I did not run a temperature. I just got out of breath. Even my oxygen percentages were good. My heart rate was normal. I had just run out of steam. However, I was very relieved when they hooked me up with oxygen; pumped me up with steroids, and admitted me from the Emergency Room. Missed church that morning and didn’t get to celebrate Mother’s Day or should I say Grandmother’s Day.
I am now on all sorts of asthma drugs. I am feeling better. I am home and laying around. Just going to the doctor wore me out and I can’t talk too much without getting breathless. However, I have been having some feelings of Deja Vue as I remember feeling this way as a child desperate for air and also coughing my guts up. Must have really scared my parents. This was a common thing for me in the winter as I grew up.
I was told I would grow out of it and I thought I did but on a rare occasion I would have that familiar gasping for breath and would have to leave where I was and do something to catch my breath. I usually was apologetic and would leave wherever I was so as to not cause others any concern about me in order to calm down and get over the spell of being out of breath.
Scarier even yet is recently I have begun to have strong allergy reactions to air bound particles. Fortunately, I recognised what was going on and got myself out of the situation either under my own power or with the help of friends. I, fortunately, had begun carrying a rescue inhaler.
Also, asthma causes damage that doesn’t go away and can come back to haunt you later. I know that wood smoke (yes, fireplaces) is difficult for me to breath; but until we started to worry about second-hand smoke, people just thought I was a party pooper if I reacted to things like cigarette smoke and wood smoke. I could also detect strong chemicals in the air just by the way they made me feel.
I had years of bronchitis but I didn’t think of it as asthma related. I would continue to go to go to work and would hope that I could control my cough when I had to talk to patients. I knew that it was probably not catching and would eventually go away on its own although that might take a long time. Once the air got cold, I had to throw a scarf around my mouth or have a coughing fit. It didn’t help that I was a mouth breather either.
I didn’t know that I had a bunch of unhappy bronchioles swollen that wouldn’t let my air get out so I could breathe back in. It was these guys that were making the wheezing noises I could hear. Chest x rays didn’t show anything so that wasn’t a path to treatment either.
If you feel sick, you are sick. Keeping going until you find effective treatment. Don’t apologize for something you can’t help doing. Yes, it is going to make some trouble for other people and you might be the center of attention for awhile It is your turn to seek and receive help. Don’t die trying to cover it up and not inconveniencing people.
P.S., I now have a preliminary diagnosis, pulmonary hypertension which was given after I had an echocardiogram of my heart. For your information, previous to that I passed certain breathing tests with flying colors. My oxygen percentiles were high. They were consistently in the 90’s. I passed a breathing test. This was the second time I had done so. My lung x-rays were clear ( I had two recent ones). Therefore, I was not put on oxygen when I went home although it was very helpful while I was in the hospital.
Fortunately, my nurse practitioner had another idea about what was wrong. She said I might be overworking my heart to keep my oxygen percentiles high. This is what appears to be happening and it didn’t show up until I had the echocardiogram of my heart. Curious enough I have had previous echocardiograms where it didn’t show up. I am waiting on my heart doctor to review the findings and to confirm the diagnosis although that may take further tests.
So what is my conclusion? It is that sometimes when you think you are sick, you are really sick and don’t stop seeking help! Look at my case.
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Does It Make Sense To Say Life Makes No Sense? How Do You Make Sense Of Life? Are You Influenced By How Others Make Sense Of Life? We Are All In This Together But We Often Try To Go It Alone.
Does it make sense to say life has no sense? Science has theories about life which it proves or disproves. Things we thought were inanimate and dumb actually are not that way. Animals are miraculous animate beings with strengths and skills we have never thought of. Not only are they necessarily not like you, they have their own ways of thinking, communicating and viewing the world. Even plants react to certain stimuli. What about us?
Are we blocking abilities because we think we don’t have them? Who are you really inside? We are fearfully and wonderfully made it says in the Bible. Why do we often reject that? Does everything happen for a reason but we think that we are unable to figure this out.
We are unique individuals. We all have strengths and talents as well as weaknesses. Why do we compete with each other when we can do so much more together? Why do we constantly pattern ourselves against some other person’s standards and achievements?
When I was trying to decide on my career (the most important path in my life at that time). I did not discern and value my own unique qualities. I was always encouraged to consider what other people would think. Individuality was lost in the shuffle. I accomplished many things but society did not pat me on my back and my family had no idea about what I was doing.
Now the meaning of life is to determine your path in life and to allow yourself to meander a little. Also be a little bit forgiving of yourself especially in this critical, hypocritical world. We must combat these forces that hold us back and act as brakes on our vehicle of life. Criticism, fault-finding, and belittling other people as a way of building themselves up by other people holds us all back.
The world is full of manipulations and plots to keep us from reaching our destiny. The average fault-finders only want to build themselves up, not you. This sabotages cooperation and promotes the power and wealth of a few. Their motto is there is not enough to go around and I am going to get mine before you can take it from me. What a grand scheme for these peoples’ lives which leads to substance abuse, relationships that may sabotage them and be unfulfilling, and a focus on things, not relationships. They are not to be trusted and because of this, they think that everybody else can not be trusted. What a flimsy throne that kind of ideology can make. They focus on things that can not make them happy in the long run and backfire. Remember how Scrooge ended up in The Christmas Carol.
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Thoughts On How To “Getter Done”
Thoughts on how to “Getter Done”. (Do as I say; don’t do as I do!)
Don’t think it; do it! How many times do you think of something without following it through? Have you been cluttering up your mind by thinking of what needs to be done? Remember don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today!
If you see it; do it. Do you think you are starting to become a hoarder? Don’t question your judgment. This happens for me with the clothes of both myself and my husband. I am afraid, I will regret my decision later. I either need to throw them out, give them away, or put them away. Don’t leave it til another day.
Are you surrounded from the past and the present by people who question your decisions. In the long run, this just makes you look like a person who can’t make up his or her mind and leaves more reason for criticism. Remember these people, operate on the principle, “Don’t look at me, look at him or her”.
Don’t put it off. If you can put it off, pick a day to do it before it will be overdue. I do this with taxes. I set a tax date with our accountant and focus on taxes the two weeks before. If you do put it off and have to pay for it, just chuck it up to experience and do better next time.
If you go ahead and do it, do a little more each time than just what is necessary.
When you do something, throw yourself into it. If it worth doing something, it is worth doing right. Remember, being a critic is an easy job. You don’t have to help somebody or even think about it.
You can practice making decisions or do something a different way or even teach yourself how to do something so you don’t have to ask someone else. This happens to me with new appliances. I don’t read the instruction book. If you have lost it, you can find it online. Then if it is broken or missing a piece or has poor instructions (The people who right the instruction books are not the people who have to use them. Has the person who has written the instructions put themselves in your shoes or asked a person who has never used it before to try and use these instructions?
Before throwing old gadgets away that have never been used Take some time to try to make them work but throw them away if they don’t work.
Remember to reward yourself for what you get done, not what you leave undone. The person that is most likely to notice that you have done something is yourself.
How many projects don’t look like something until they are completely done? Have you every watched someone put something together and it is not until is finished that a person can determine if it works or if it looks like anything? If you are the person trying to do this, reward yourself either way because you can dispose of something if it is useless and can’t be made to work anymore. Give it the old heave-ho.
Don’t overthink it. Is the task worth the extra time you spend on trying to get it right? Remember practice makes perfect. Children don’t do this. When they have an idea when they are playing, they just do it.
I have spoken about mind clutter. Now you know you can do something about it and you can use that time to fly-fish or meditate bother productive tasks! You can even make your downtime productive and do things you didn’t have a chance to do.
My mother had one good rule. As a young daughter, I had many “projects” and instead 0f having me put everything away at the end of the day, she had me group my tools and materials together and put them up somewhere (this also kept people from tripping over them) where I could go get them and work on it another day. This also kept me from losing them and having to find everything again I needed the next day.
Stop doing things that you don’t think are necessary like making your bed in the morning instead of straightening the covers before you go to sleep. My mother (God Bless Her Soul) used to iron the sheets. Who does that anymore? Remember bedrooms in advertising have been staged to make them look neat clean and very desirable. Bedrooms don’t look like that only if you have rented one in a hotel and you are just coming in the door.
Best suggestion I have ever heard. If you are having surprise company, before you go to the door stick your vacuum in the middle of the floor like you have just started to clean the room or turn your Roomba on. I don’t know about you, but my vacuum is already in the living room by the front door as we don’t have a coat closet. See; I am ready for anything.
If you are doing something, just do it. Don’t think about what you did not do yesterday or what you have to do tomorrow. It is a good idea to have a notepad handy (either electronic or paper) on which to write things down that you want to remember but can’t do anything about now. YHow about trying to learn Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and loading the dishwasher. Now I can sing or listen to hymns while I work because I might want to sing them in church someday as a “special”.
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Is It True That Only Those Who Do Good Can Feel Guilty?
Is it true that only those who do good can feel guilty? Does it follow that those who do bad do not feel guilty? On top of this, this propensity for those who do good to feel bad is often used against them. People who do good (or the Goodies) when told that they did something wrong or that they made a mistake, it petrifies them and hinders their ability to do good in the future? Are there a lot of people out there that don’t want people doing good and this is the best way to stop them because they have a conscience and are therefore fearful that they might hurt somebody? The Badies are out there making sure that they get what they want regardless of whether or not they hurt somebody.
The Goodies are fearful of being caught in a lie even if they didn’t know it was untrue until the Badies chastised them with it. Badies lie all the time and to protect themselves from being called liars call other people liars to put the spotlight on someone else. The best defence for them is a good offence. The Goodies can become so busy defending themselves that they forget to point out the Bad Guy’s mistakes.
How can this be helped? The Goodies must become aware of what is happening so they can turn the tables on the Badies. For example, “You call me a liar, when you lie all the time.” When attacked this way by the Badies, a Goody can say this is none of your business. A Bady attacked me once about my hair cut. She loudly stated in a room full of family, “Who cut your hair?” I replied by saying, “Who asked you?” I had decided to not fall for her bait and to put the spotlight on her. It did shut her up and the family members went on with their catching up. Goodies can be too polite and these manipulators can count on this.
Badies not only lie, but they are good rationalizers. and can invent or find reasons why they are not guilty and should not be picked on. It is important to recognise that if a Badie asks noisy questions and is not being polite that a Goody does not have to be polite either!
We all have boundaries and Badies especially like to cross them. For example, within the nuclear family, certain issues are usually kept quiet and not shared with others especially when the Badies are just being noisy and want to lay these problems out in public so they can often give you bad advice and perhaps cause a spectacle. People are not entitled to know your secrets. These people can be very noisy. I had one who looked up our friend’s phone number and called them inquiring about us. Our friends had never met and were shocked and surprised when she called them up out of the blue.
The only boundaries Badies respect are their own and they are inclined to keep secrets. They can be very outgoing and social when things are going good and disappear when things are going badly for them. They can be very secretive that way and you can never get to know the whole person even when you find something that tells on them. It may be a good idea at the time to use a Goodies address, but then something like information about bad checks pops up in the mail or on the phone.
Badies make a bushel barrow of mistakes themselves and they can go far in and trying to cover up past mistakes which are often not found out about until that person leaves the scene. They make up their own rules to benefit themselves like when a person (friend, neighbour, relative) dies that they will naturally inherit from him or her and even ask for that inheritance early. See the story of the Prodigal Son” in the Bible. They can walk all over a Goody when they are alive and when they are in the grave, they don’t stop. An inheritance can be a windfall for someone but the will usually makes sure that all the bills are paid if there is money there to do it. Doesn’t it make sense that the person, often a Goody, who helps the most, inherits the most, even if he or she doesn’t think he or she deserves it.
Guilt is the primary tool of the Badies and they often think to themselves that if I get people to look at another person who is doing “wrong” they won’t see what I am doing wrong. Don’t look at me; look at him. If these defensive maneuvers work, then they can get off Scott free. When they judge others, they are usually revealing what others could condemn them for. “Judge not that ye may not be judged; condemn not that ye not be condemned.” It is written in the Bible. For example, it is likely that the marital partner that desires to commit adultery condemns his or her partner for adultery either while desiring to do it himself or herself or while secretly actually indulging in adultery himself or herself.
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