Avoiding Road Rage And Not Just On The Road
It makes sense if you see someone coming toward you looking like an impending thunderstorm that you should avoid them if you possibly can, Do you want to get wet especially when they don’t make umbrellas to protect you from this type of storm. Sometimes all you can do is to not agitate them and try to get away as soon as possible.
For example,I had a woman who was checking me out in Wally World and I had many items and I needed a little help; I knew that she didn’t like this and that the skies were getting darker and darker. I also needed someone to help me take my groceries out to the car, but I also knew that I probably shouldn’t ask her right at that time so I didn’t and as I pushed my cart away from the checkout station, I spotted a more likely associate further away from where I had checked out and asked her to help me.
Another problem is letting someone’s facial expression upset you or influence the way you feel. At a play or in a meeting, do you let the way someone looks at the play or in the meeting cause you to change your mind about the play or about what is going on in the meeting? Do you let somebody else’s assessment change how you think about something? Do you get less enjoyment out of the play or do you feel that the meeting is promoting better ideas than you thought it was doing. Are you independent or do you feel less sure of yourself when it comes to the judgment of what is going on around you? Do you unconsciously tune in to what is going on around you and lose your self-confidence about what you are thinking or feeling?
The Devil Made Me Do It
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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The Word Ambiguity Is Ambiguous-Curious? Read This Post
Many people have difficulty tolerating ambiguity. This may be just why our nation is so polarized right now between the left and the right, Trump haters and Trump supporters.
Actually, ambiguity is often the state of knowledge. We just can’t get a clear picture of how things are and just when we do, we find out something new. Young twenty-somes often do not feel comfortable with ambiguity and this is the reason why many of them are seduced into cults which claim that they have all the answers like Scientology.
Boundaries can be ambiguous
I am satisfied that I don’t know all the answers and that some answers will never be extremely clear although they may become clearer over time. I believe that I don’t know all the answers and that I won’t know all the answers in this lifetime. People who do not believe this way makes me very nervous as I don’t totally agree with everybody and everybody doesn’t agree totally with me.
College was the place where my fellow students were encouraged to disagree and to debate many points of view unlike most of the students of today who are reinforced for accepting the beliefs of certain professors who are deemed politically correct.
Gaining in knowledge should encourage surprises and new
Self-Styled Expert?
ideas not consistently reinforce all beliefs presented or taught. Science should constantly explore and evaluate conclusions made from current experiments and past knowledge. Many scientists often currently skip the phase where they develop a naturalistic understanding of the area of knowledge that they choose to evaluate. This often involves acquiring personal experience which has been typical of anthropologists in the past who went out to live among a people that they proposed to study. First-hand experience can sometimes be better than book-learning.
The Best Child-Expert
How many child psychologists have ever had first-hand experience bringing up children? or have spent time playing with them after they themselves have entered high school or college? Getting down on the floor and participating in a child’s imaginary world is often different from observing and taking measurements from an experimental psychologist’s perspective. I especially like to have the child have me draw a picture of an experience he or she has had. Also, suits and ties and tight skirts and high heels get in the way of making these observations.
I once was a participant in setting up an experiment about snake phobia. I was not
She appears SCARED!
particularly worried as I didn’t think actual snakes would be used even though I was snake phobic and didn’t tell people because they then would surprise me with one of the real snakes used in their experiments. I knew that when I saw someone carrying a shoe box in the rooms where my fellow students had study carrels there usually was a snake in it and I would leave the room without saying anything.
After I was strapped into a recliner with leads for physiological responses in a room with no windows and the only door behind me, and shown slide pictures of snakes, I was told this was when the actual snake would be brought in a glass aquarium from behind me. If this had happened, I (or any real snake phobic) would have gone “ape-shit” and that would have been the end of the experiment and the start of a lawsuit if I and/or they had survived.
No one knows everything and we never will. We just have to live with ambiguity in our lives. Concrete knowledge is desired and claimed by some, but can not usually be true in actual reality.
Is this Green?
Another supposedly concrete example of ambiguity is the spectrum of colors. The is no such thing usually as a pure color and the changing fashions in fashion design and interior decorating illustrate this. For example, a color of green that is fashionable in yarn for crocheting and knitting goes out of style and it goes on sale. Someone making items from this yarn for sale at craft fairs might not get many buyers. This color of green no longer is fashionable. Or pick up an old or vintage handmade throw at a flea market and it might not go with the things you currently have where you plan to use it. Did you know that the color green or other primary colors can be ambiguous?
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Hiding Shame Based Interactions
How often people use shame to get other people to do what they want them to do. Shame is a gut-based reaction that can bypass the forebrain’s common sense and leave a person helpless to figure out what really caused it. You don’t just feel bad when this happens to you feel really bad and usually also guilty too. “Shame on you.”
Shame is often how the victim of abuse feels. This keeps them from getting angry at the abuser and why they often don’t talk about what happened either. Shame doesn’t go away. It stays. The only way it can disappear is if the victim tries to forget it.
When Is Reassurance Necessary?
This is why abuse victims often say that they don’t want to talk about it because they have tried to forget it and talking about it might bring it back. If there are witnesses, they might think they are crazy because they might remember something about what happened; but the victim won’t talk if they ask them what happened.
What if your memory is, “Don’t hit him; hit me.”? You know who the likely abuser was because you were there too. It makes you feel crazy as the witness as you are the only one who wants to or can remember it. “I don’t like to think about things like that anymore” is his response. “I try to forget things like that.” “I don’t want to bring it back.”
Feelings of shame can do that to a person. They might cause the person to feel the pain again both physical and emotional. If a person feels that they might be made to feel shame about something; they won’t tell anyone who might do that to them.
Prevent Child Abuse With the Truth
The cases of sexual abuse by famous people that have come to light have brought it back out in the open. I know I can now say that I am the victim of sexual abuse even though I might not elect to tell you the details because I didn’t do it. The abuser is the one who ought to feel ashamed, not me or anyone in one in the same situation. However, this still happens in countries or religions where they have things like Muslim Surhea law and the rape victim gets killed not the rapist.
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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!
It’s Their Drama, Not Yours
I learned a valuable lesson today: “It’s Their Drama, Not Yours! I’m a fixer-upper by nature and it doesn’t hurt that I am in a helping profession. “Did I hurt your feelings” Whose feelings are they? “You should have known in the first place that I didn’t want to do it!” “So why didn’t you let me off the hook?” Am I a bad guy because I should have known that even though they said,”Yes,” They really didn’t want to do it.and they felt it was an imposition.
Now whatever you do, they get mad because you couldn’t read minds. They take that load off their shoulders and put it on yours. Now you end up feeling bad instead of them. It is like a sudden rainstorm landed right above your head and you get soaked. They wind up feeling better and you have accepted a part in their drama that you really didn’t want and really didn’t earn.
What if you had a really good time and thought they had too. Whose fault is it? It’s not yours and why didn’t they “fess up earlier that they didn’t want to be there. Imagine you cooked a really good meal from a recipe you found and wanted to try and felt you had successfully mastered a good meal. Then someone tells you that there was something in the meal that caused an untoward reaction in them and you should have known it would, but they didn’t remind you and ate it anyway.
Another person who ate the meal smiled and said that they liked it but really they didn’t like casseroles as they were a meat and potatoes type of person. What happened is that you fixed a nice meal for a couple of ingrates. What a waste of time! and now you get mad when you didn’t feel bad before. Is it catching? Drama attracts drama. Sometimes no one is happy unless no one else is happy.
Is drama a disease? Sometimes it is not so bad when the contagion involves happiness and success. How about learning that someone is going to have a baby. Whoops there was one person in the crowd who is childless and unable to get pregnant or better yet did successfully have a baby by in vitro fertilization and then lost it to SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). This can be a wet blanket and the person with the news now feels bad that they even mentioned it in front of that person.
Some people even stage a situation so they can create drama. This woman had a display of fragile glass perfume bottles on a coffee table and almost the first thing that she did was to call the toddlers present attention to it and if they would not have touched the perfume bottles in the first scenario; but they will now. Possibly it will result in a broken bottle or two, maybe the most expensive ones. The payoff in drama is superlative and the instigator is super comfortable in her innosence, but the others don’t know how she did it or even that she set it up.
See the previous post, “Leave the Drama to the Lama”. Feelings can be catching; but often not in a good way. Have you ever left a group when an argument became heated. Some of these situations can leave you shell-shocked with PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome). This is what makes soap operas so exciting. What will they stir up next? Calm down. Go listen to some soothing music, take walk in the park. Make a quick exit back to where you are feeling good again. If someone had a bad cold would you stand close to them, kiss them or maybe even drink out of their glass. You wouldn’t expose yourself to that so don’t expose yourself to somebody’s drama.
Sometimes drama is fun like in movies or books; but you know it is not really happening in front of you. You might get scared, laugh hysterically, or even shed a few tears but you know down deep that it isn’t real. If you tend to take some things seriously, then you might avoid certain types of stories. Me, I don’t like horror shows. There are enough really scary things happening in real life. Has anyone followed the news lately?
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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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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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