Month: February 2012

He’s 48 pounds with the sturdy build of a wrestler. A bow-legged juggernaut.  Blonde-haired and blue-eyed.  Black eyeliner, nose, and paw pads.  He’s my little monster, Grendel.

I was celebrating a significant birthday a while back when I got the harebrained idea that I should have a dog.  You know, arbitrarily attach a significant choice to a somewhat irrelevant life event?  Yeah. It was a rather weak excuse for making the best decision I’ve ever made.

You see, my brother and I weren’t raised with dogs.  Other than Titanic, the unsinkable golden newt that I had in third grade, we didn’t have pets. Even Titanic met an untimely demise when I left him (her?) in a cereal bowl instead of his tank.  He skulked off to somewhere, never to be seen again.  I hold out hope that he’s a gargantuan creature dwelling in Lake Jennie between Dassel and Hutchinson, turning more into lore than a victim of my failed pet ownership.  That would be the hero’s ending that Titanic would deserve.  I fear that’s not the case.

A wayward newt is hardly a case against dog ownership, but I didn’t exactly have a stellar track record to build on. Something that I’m sure we could blame on my parents, my older brother got a dog as soon as he hit adulthood, marriage, and nesting.  I took on the love and caring for Danny the Dog as part of my raison d’être.  That big horse of a dog was the cat’s meow with me.  He was big, fluffy, and Not Mine.

Then, Petfinder.com happened.  Bored at work, my friend and I would pass links to profiles of cute dogs back and forth to each other.  It started with a puggle (pug and beagle mix) and ended with Grendel.

Grendel is my dear, sweet Glen of Imaal Terrier.  I didn’t know what that breed was, either, when he came up as a breed possibility for my lifestyle constraints: Lives in apartment in the city without a yard, doesn’t jog and won’t jog, has family members with allergies, and may subject animal to small children of blood relation.  Petfinder located the only Glen within states of here at the Mower County Humane Society in Austin, Minnesota.  Now, if you’re one to put credence in signs, not only was he the only one in reasonable proximity, but his profile said that he’s blonde-haired, blue-eyed, hates cats, and doesn’t bark.  That’s my boy.

Okay, I don’t hate cats.  But, I don’t mind that he does.

I brought Grendel home without even knowing how to give a dog a bath—and boy, did he need one. We spent much of that first stretch of time learning how to take care of each other.  First, we got really wet as I learned the baptism-by-fire way to give a dog a bath.  Then, we figured out the rest of how to live with each other. And, we haven’t deviated much from the routine we set that first weekend that he came to live with me in my apartment in Minnetonka.  Now, as I’m looking at his fifth anniversary of living with me, I can do our routine in my sleep.  And, sometimes I do.

Grendel is my pet.  I’m not a pet owner who is referred to in parental terms because I think a pet is even more revered in my world system.  He’s my perpetual dependent who I am to love and cherish and make comfortable and happy.  I don’t expect anything of him and he won’t develop much past where he already is.  People ask me if I’ve had him trained and I usually respond somewhat shamefacedly that I have not.  I’ve noticed, though, that we have trained each other.  I don’t give a darn about whether or not I’m a pack leader, when I say things like, “Move over,” he moves to his side of the couch.  When I say, “C’mere,” he does.   When I say, “Wait,” I’m pretty sure he hears, “GO!”  We’re still working out the glitches.

For someone who’s never owned a pet, I had no preconceived notions of how pets should be.  He’s not my work dog; he’s too lackadaisical.  He’s not my hunting dog; I’m still mortified when he killed a squirrel on one of our walks.  He’s not a playful dog; he never brings anything back when we play “fetch.”  He is simply my companion.

It’s a beautiful relationship.

And, though I don’t refer to myself as his parent, I certainly enjoy the irony of being “Grendel’s Mother.”  If you’re unfamiliar with the story Beowulf, I’ll offer up the smallest of spoilers when I say that the real monster in the story isn’t Grendel, but his mother…which isn’t far from the truth in our lives, either.

You mess with my dog, you mess with me.

He was the best $50 I’ve ever spent.  Every time I turn on the iPod music, grab the red Kong, fill it with a spoonful of peanut butter and say, “Kennel up,” I begin missing him until I can get home again…which is why it’s time to sign off now.

It’s time to go home.

To this guy.

With thanks,
Andy

 

I admit it.  I’ve had some work done.  A cognitive nip here, a mental tuck there.  I feel good.  Heck, I look good.  Whether we’re willing to admit it or not, all of us could probably benefit from having a professional get in our heads every once in a while.  Look under the hood.  Monitor the dipstick.  It’s maintenance.

Maintenance usually involves an overhaul.  An overhaul of my ideas and what I hold to be true.  What I consider when I make decisions.  What I cling to as validation for my choices.  Ideas that may not actually be accurate. It is a very real and very common tenet of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy that we humans believe distortions.  We cling to versions of reality that can be found anywhere on the spectrum between truth and fallacy.

I joke with my friends that we shouldn’t let my copays go to waste whenever I share a kernel of knowledge from my work with psychology professionals.  Many of the lessons are easily applicable across a broad base.  The basis of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is that our emotions affect our thoughts which affect our behaviors. It’s triangular between the three.  What we think changes how we feel and then how we act.  Likewise, how we act changes how we think and feel.  And, how we feel changes how we act and think.  Stay with me.

If I look in the mirror and think “I look fat” and feel shame and then I reach for a candy bar, I will probably feel sad because I’ll think “I’m a failure” because I just ate a candy bar and will still look fat.

Not so unfamiliar a thought pattern, is it? Thinking, emotions, and behavior.  Right there. But, it’s not always as easy to see the triangle happening between the three—sometimes the thoughts are really ingrained and subliminal and the actions are veiled even to ourselves.  It gets hairy.  It’s why the professionals get paid to do their jobs.

I remember the day that my particular professional handed me a paper with the 15 Cognitive Distortions listed on it.  Google it.  You’ll find them, too.  They’ve been accepted and they’re used widely in helping people to figure out how we might see things a little less accurately than they really are.  I was pretty pissed that day.  Being shown—not told—that something isn’t how I thought it is tends to be a pill I don’t swallow very happily.

What?  You mean that I shouldn’t save my friend from herself?  I should just let her throw her life away and go down the road to ruin because she’s making a choice that I don’t agree with?  How could I live with myself for letting her do that?  How could I stay friends with her after failing her so?

You see, I was a caretaker, among other things.  I knew what people should do, how they should do it, and when they should do it.  I could give you ten reasons why it should be done and assure you that Andy knows best. But you know what?  Andy didn’t know best.  That is simply untrue.  It was a distortion. Consider the 15 Cognitive Distortions that I paraphrase from those presented by Aaron Beck and David Burns.  With each, I’m including a small example from my distortion arsenal:

1. Filtering: Taking the positive aspects out of a situation and focusing only on the negative. “That typo ruined the whole magazine.”

2. Polarized Thinking: Things are either/or—there’s no gray, but just black or white.  “Either I answer all the emails in my inbox immediately or I’m not doing my job right.”

3. Overgeneralization: If something happens once, we might think it’ll always happen that way.  “I didn’t get any feedback from that Facebook post, nobody cares. I’m going to stop posting.”

4. Jumping to Conclusions: Without having firsthand knowledge, we think we know what someone else will do or what they’re thinking, particularly about us. “Oh, he’s super busy and important.  He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

5. Catastrophizing: Using the “what if” scenario to try to minimize or maximize a situation out of proportion.  “What if I print that review and someone doesn’t like it and the world ends?”

6. Personalization: This happens when we interpret unrelated events to be about us.  “She just walked across the room when I got here—she hates me.  She’s probably talking about me right now to that person. Look.  He scowled.  He hates me, too.”

7. Control Fallacies: External control fallacies include those that are based upon things happening to us, “My piece isn’t that good because my internet connection was bad and I couldn’t research”; internal control fallacies are those that are based upon what we think we caused, “Why are you upset?  Because of something I did?”

8. Fallacy of Fairness: We think we know what is fair and we expect people to agree with us. “It was my turn to get the good assignment even though she knows more about the subject.  I should’ve gotten to pick.”

9. Blaming: We either blame others for our feelings, “He makes me feel worthless”; or blame ourselves too much, “I’m just being too sensitive again.”

10. Shoulds: We have ironclad rules about how people should behave.  “She should have gotten me a card, I remembered her birthday and got her one.”

11. Emotional Reasoning: We believe that what we feel must be true, automatically. “I’m sad because you said that, therefore you must be wrong.”

12. Fallacy of Change: We expect people to change to our liking if we pressure or cajole them enough.  “He knows I hate it when he drinks too much, he’ll stop doing it for me.”

13. Global Labeling: Taking one error and making it true for all situations.  “She didn’t tell me the truth.  She is a liar.”  Or, “She moved to another city. She always abandons her friends.”

14. Being Right: We always have to be right no matter what the circumstances are or how it makes another person feel.  “Didn’t I tell you that was a mistake? Yeah.  I was right.”

15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: We expect our self-sacrifices to pay off, as if there’s a big scoreboard in the sky.  “I just need to grin and bear it.  Then, I’m sure I’ll get the raise I deserve.”

Here’s the deal.  There might be some truths to these claims but there might not be.  Where we get into trouble is when we base our thoughts, actions, and feelings on these ideas without pausing to reflect.  Depending on the typo, it could ruin a magazine.  A person can be busy and not want to talk, but I won’t know until I ask…and suggest a different time to talk. Things beyond our control can impede our progress but we can also mitigate problems by way of what we can control.  Nobody will change because you want them to.  And yes, some victories are hard won, but we shouldn’t have to suffer as a matter of course to get what we want in life.

I know which distortions I tend to cling to—I come by some of them honestly as a Scandinavian Lutheran Martyr…and some of them I’ve developed on my own, lobbing shoulds and shouldn’ts around like grenades.

It’s when I can look at that list and laugh that I know I’m on the right track.  I can see them.  I can laugh at them.  And, I can try not to think them.  That’s when I can avoid the triangle of negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that might lead me to make unhealthy choices.  If I see a situation for what it is and try to change it, I may not need to find a way to cope with it.  I may just change my true reality to be better.

At the end of the day, what I hope for all of us is that our realities can be truthful and, in them, we can find comfort.  And, if we need to, get a little work done.  Spread our copays around.  Pay it forward.

With thanks,
Andy