Sarcasm, Humour and Ambiguity

In Recovery we say "you cannot be in temper when in humour", and it's certainly true that it's tough to be angry or upset when you are laughing. There is nothing that is more healthy than an infectious joke shared with your best friends that brings on irrepressible cackling.

I can't remember very many jokes, although one of my best friends is a consummate entertainer and has an endless supply of jokes and funny stories to tell. Years ago he taught his daughter a kid friendly joke, and it's one of the few jokes I can remember today because I heard him repeat it so many times. It goes like this: "A horse walks into a bar with a set of jumper cables around its neck. The bartender looks the horse up and down and says ruefully: 'I don't mind the long face, just don't start anything'." My friend laughed every time he told this joke, insisting that repetition was they key to making it work. The set up is fairly old and hackneyed, which is partly why I remember and like this joke's very simple punchline.

Comedy is an acquired taste. A great deal of why we laugh at a particular joke has as much to do with how the person tells the joke as how good the joke itself is. Jokes are often specific to their era, especially if based on parody. Everybody has their favourites, some comedy ages well, although a lot does not.

The kid friendly joke about the horse works (or tries to work) based entirely on expectation, double entendres, and sudden realization. The double entendre is a cornerstone of comedy often used to deliver the real message, and may employ innuendo, an explicit dual meaning of a word or phrase, or in some cases a homophone, or word that sounds like another word. Jokes often hide truth within their punchlines, and communicate messages on multiple frequencies.

Many people enjoy sarcasm, although in our Recovery meetings we discuss sarcasm as an example of temper. A great deal of modern humour is based on sarcasm, where irony is expressed through intonation. Sarcastic remarks often state the opposite of what they intend, and so when used as insults or cutting put-downs they relieve the speaker of responsibility for the remark. We say "...officer Frank does a greeaat service for our town," although we mean quite the opposite and the listener is queued by our tone of voice as to our true meaning.

As humour, sarcasm is a lazy device, it requires little thought. Some people develop a habit of expressing themselves this way, they seem to think that the cleverness of their ruse is enough to excuse the negative punch of the insult. In Recovery meetings we strongly discourage this conduct. We do encourage good humour as an antidote to temper, although humour without sarcasm or put-downs is a puzzle for some people.

The problem with sarcasm is eloquently illustrated in the following Kid's in the Hall sketch portrayed by Dave Foley, and Kevin McDonald.



[Scene: The snack table at a party. Dave stands there drinking a beer, and Kevin walks over.]

[Note: all of Dave's lines are delivered in an exaggerated tone with elongated vowels and odd emphasis.]

Kevin: Great party, huh? I actually don't know anyone at the party, actually, I'm kinda new to the neighborhood, actually, but my friend Chris said "come to the party, I'll introduce you around, you'll know everybody by the time you leave the party." Chris knows everybody, and soon I'll know everybody! 'Course, Chris didn't show up. So I guess I gotta mingle. So here I am mingling! 'Course, mingling really isn't my game, I'm not really a mingler, per se, I was actually in the corner alone mingling - that means I'm not talking to anyone, actually. I saw you over here, I said "there's a guy by himself, why not go over here, I'll mingle with this guy, this guy looks like a mingler," so hi, I'm Derek, pleased to meet you.

[Kevin extends his arm, and they shake hands.]

Dave: Well it certainly IS a plea-sure to meet YOU, ... Derek!

Kevin: I'm sorry if I bothered you.

Dave: Oh no, you're not both-er-ing me, Derek, far from it. There's nothing I would rather DO than just stand here and CHAT with YOU! Y'know - reeeally get to know yooou?

Kevin: Look, I don't think there's any need to be sarcastic.

Dave: Oh, I'm ... not ... being ... sar-cas-tic! Nooo! This is just a little speech impediment. I can't ... help ... it!

Kevin: Okay, I've obviously said or done something wrong to upset you, I'm just gonna apologize and be on my way.

Dave: No, no, no, please STAAAYYY. It's true. I've talked this way ALL MY LIFE. It's made things veeeerrrry dif-fi-cult for me.

Kevin: Yeah! Right!

[Kevin walks away, with Dave calling after him.]

Dave: Hey! Where ya goin'? Come back! I really wannna be YOOUR friend! [to the camera] I'm sooo lonely.

The sarcastic guy skit works because it makes obvious the problems with sarcasm, this is the truth revealed in this 2 minute drama. I think what is brilliant about this bit is that it isn't clear if Dave, the sarcastic guy, really is being sarcastic, or whether he genuinely does have the sarcastic-sounding speech impediment that he claims to have. Either way it doesn't matter, he is alone at the end of the skit, he has effectively alienated his audience with sarcasm.

I worked for a manager for several years who tried to encourage staff through the use of innuendo and suggestive comments. Her remarks about performance, bonuses, and expected work hours were often couched in statements that made implications and were less than clear.

She would occasionally make remarks in staff meetings like, "... every year the management staff compares notes on all the employees, and you know, ... sometimes HR sends out pink slips." This thinly veiled threat carried the bite of telling us that she would see that certain individuals who didn't work sufficiently hard would be fired, however, she didn't say it explicitly. The threatening message was implied and at the time nobody asked for clarification and none was ever offered. I found these sort of exchanges extremely vexing and upsetting. I wasn't sure whether my manager was threatening our work group, whether she was trying to be funny, simply not saying anything very specific, or to what extent these remarks were directed at me personally.

Recognizing the pattern of my frustrations with this manager and how it led to temper took me a long time. In Recovery we say "suppress your temper, express your feelings" although expressing your feelings can be quite difficult at times. I spent a lot of time suppressing my temper around her and only after I was reassigned to work with someone else did it dawn on me that I ought to have been expressing my feelings of confusion by asking for clarification.

Dr. Abraham Low gives an even simpler example where he talks about meeting someone on the street who smiles at you. He writes:

The difficulty begins, however, the moment you go beyond the domain of observation and pass into the area of interpretation. After observing the smile on the man's face you may ask yourself, for instance, what precisely that smile means. It may mean warmth of feeling and joy of seeing you. The proper interpretation, then, would be: fellowship, friendship, good will. Or, it may mean nothing more than conventional politeness. That would be: indifference. If the smile is associated with strained features the proper interpretation might be: annoyance or resentment of your intruding. And finally, the smile may have an expression of irony or sarcasm. In that case, the proper label would be: haughtiness, disrespect and perhaps hostility. This simple example indicates that the pitfalls of thinking reside in interpretation rather than observation. The trouble is that once you have made an observation you feel an imperative urge to interpret it. And if interpretation is difficult even in outer observations, the attempt to apply it to inner experiences increases the obstacles to such an extent that only a mind trained in the techniques and rules of the thinking process can be expected to conquer them.

The puzzle that we encounter here is that even given the simplest of scenarios, we can get tripped up by interpretation of the situation. In Recovery meetings we often use the tool "to know is not to know", which is a reminder that you often do not have a complete understanding of any given situation.

We often feel pressure to be in-the-know, to be cool and hip and to follow the implied meanings of others. For some reason asking for clarification seems either awkward, or something that we feel we should avoid. We may genuinely have misunderstood the statement that someone made. It is also possible that we understood their hidden meaning all too well, however leaving certain statements implied can excuse the speaker of responsibility and prevents the remark from being challenged. Leaving strong implications unaddressed can lead to confusion, frustration, irritation, fear and anger. By asking for clarification and recognizing that we don't have all the information we are applying the tool "to know is not to know".

Humour is good for us, and excellent fun. Lets keep telling jokes as best we can, but lets also be aware that some jokes are expressions of temper and told at the expense of others. I used to try to entertain through the use of sarcasm, and often thought of myself as clever and witty, although I can't say for sure whether my audience was impressed. If you are bad at telling jokes like I am, (I can only get so much mileage out of the story about the horse that walks into the bar) consider that sarcasm may create confusion and temper in others and often won't make you a hit at parties.

Communicating can be hard work for nervous persons, not everyone is an expert joke or story teller. Clever or cutting remarks might make you feel in control, as expressing temper often does, but these words will be poorly received. Using a light conversational touch that does not express temper can be a far more effective strategy. Lately, I've found that patient attempts to learn about the interests of others and share my ideas and experiences are good ways to get to know people. I also tell bad jokes, have you heard the one about the horse that walks into a bar with a set of jumper cables around its neck...

More Information

How Does This Work?

Fear is the Mind Killer

Fear is The Mind-Killer

As a teenager I loved horror and science fiction films. I still do today. I know lots of people who simply don't like horror films and won't go see them under any circumstances. These films show us images that are by definition unpleasant, and I think on average many people tend not to like horror films regardless of how good the acting and story telling is.

In the late 1970s my parents took me to see an evening screening of a gothic horror film staring Frank Langella titled simply "Dracula". I remember walking home from the theater with them after the movie and being impressed by how dark and quiet the city streets were at night. There is a scene in this film where the vampire hunter, Van Helsing, opens the grave of one of Dracula's recent victims to find that the newly undead vampire has clawed a hole in the bottom of its coffin and escaped into the catacombs beneath the church graveyard. Van Helsing climbs down through the hole and into the catacombs where he is confronted by the wraith in a flowing white gown staring at him with glowing red eyes.

This image kept me awake at night for years. While falling asleep, on the edge of awareness I would slip into a semiconscious state where the red eyed wraith would confront me. I would jolt back into wakefulness, heart pounding,  feeling completely unnerved and sensing the breath of the thing in the room with me. I had a copy of Frank Herbert's novel Dune at the time, which I read cover to cover to distract myself at night before falling asleep. I might have read it twice, it seemed to take forever to get through.

Within Dune there is a scene where the main character is given a test where he puts his hand in a box that induces pain, although he is told that the box will not actually harm him. He is also told that if he cannot control his impulse to withdraw his hand from the box he will fail the test- and that failure will amount to death. To control his fear he recites the following litany:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

I typed out this short poem on a small piece of paper which I carried around with me. Eventually I memorized the litany and often recited it at night to try to manage my fears. Probably tracking the long details of outer space politics described in Herbert's novel Dune had the strongest effect in putting me to sleep, but I believed in the magical power of the litany to dispel fear and I remembered it for years.

I still enjoy horror films although they very rarely induce the same sort of terror that they did when I was young. The quality of what frightens me on a day-to-day basis and prevents me from falling asleep now is quite different. My beliefs have changed, for better or worse I am quite convinced that there are no vampires or ghosts that can hurt me while I sleep, and so when my rational mind is in control these fanciful spectres are easily dismissed.

Today it is the details of the practical and the mundane that have far more power over my subconscious than any subterranean wraith.

I think the insidious difference is that my fears today do not recede in the daylight but will manifest there as compellingly as they do late at night. Years ago the stigma of mental health issues bothered me immensely. When I would go out in public I would struggle with the idea that people knew what was wrong with me, that they knew I was unemployed, and that they could tell that I was the type of person who had spent time recuperating in a psychiatric hospital ward.

It has been many years since my hospitalization and today stigma is less of an issue for me than it was in the past, nevertheless some nights I still lay awake worried and unable to sleep. I worry about certain bills, whether my job will still be there at the end of the year, what should I do about the awkward social exchange I had with some person that I met the other day, and on and on.

While these fears are perhaps less intense than my preternatural childhood fears, they have a persistence that I find very difficult to dispel. At times these practical worries have dominated my thought process in a way that blotted out meaningful experiences. My daytime waking nightmares would permeate my mind and take me prisoner, dulling my ability to think clearly and act. What they lacked in heart throbbing intensity and jump scare factor they more than made up for in tenacity. The day-in-day-out quality of the paranoid realistic experience of "practical" worries at times became a marathon of endurance testing my ability to withstand the endless unresolvedness of the issues.

Dr. Abraham Low writes:

If phobias, compulsions and obsessions dominate the symptomatic scene the resulting fear is that of the mental collapse. After months and years of sustained suffering the twin fears of physical and mental collapse may recede, giving way to apprehensions about the impossibility of a final cure. This is the fear of the permanent handicap. The three basic fears of the physical collapse, mental collapse and permanent handicap are variations of the danger theme suggested by the symptomatic idiom. 

Another source of defeatism is temper. The patients are taught that temper has two divisions. The one comes into play when I persuade myself that a person has done me wrong. As a result I become angry. This is called the angry or aggressive temper, which appears in various shades and nuances: resentment, impatience, indignation, disgust, hatred, etc. The other variety of temper is brought into action whenever I feel that I am wrong. This gives rise to moral, ethical and esthetic fears or to the fear of being a failure in pragmatic pursuits. I am afraid that I sinned, failed, blundered, in short, that I defaulted on a moral, ethical or esthetic standard or on the standard of average efficiency. This is called the fearful or retreating temper which may express itself in many different qualities and intensities: discouragement, preoccupation, embarrassment, worry, sense of shame, feeling of inadequacy, hopelessness, despair, etc. The fearful temper is likely to lead either to a feeling of personal inferiority or to the sentiment of group stigmatization. Whether it be of the angry or fearful description, temper reinforces and intensifies the symptom which, in its turn, increases the temperamental reaction. In this manner, a vicious cycle is established between temper and symptom.

In Recovery we say "replace an insecure thought with a secure one", and I think this tool can be quite difficult to use. The first step is always to simply identify the insecure thought, for me its often something like "...I will crash the car into oncoming traffic," or "...I will lose my job within the next six months due to the incompetency of the director," or "...I have nothing to say to anyone at this social function; I'm awkward and people don't like talking to me."

The quality of the fear in each of these cases has a quiet unspoken irrationality to it, in this way these grown up fears are the same as my childhood fears. They whisper nonsense in the back of my mind, through implication and innuendo they suggest the things that will go wrong and pretend that they arise from some hard to speak truth. If I fan the flames of these irrational fears by buying into them they become more real, more persistent, and can spin up into a vicious cycle that grips me day and night.

These thoughts for me are all rooted in partial truths, so to me they are compelling, but in each there are flaws. The first thought, about crashing the car, is related to a false belief regarding my inability to drive competently. I don't like driving, and I am not a practiced driver, but I am not so hopeless that there is a high probability that I will drive in the wrong lane. In Recovery we acknowledge that nervous persons often have "the passion for self-distrust", and that this perspective is not realistic.

If I practice Recovery methods and I spot the physical symptoms associated with the fears; I notice that I am griping the steering wheel, that I'm hunched in the drivers seat or that my leg is tense as I switch between the brake and the accelerator. By noticing these physical symptoms I can control my muscles, and intentionally relax my grip on the wheel and lean back in the seat. By forcing my muscles to relax I also reduce tension in my mind. By noticing my thoughts, where I imagine veering into oncoming traffic I can label them as false beliefs. This won't necessarily make the fears go away immediately but it does keep in the fore front of my mind that I am having a fearful temperamental response and that the ideas aren't real.

By spotting my fearful temper I am able to suppress the vicious cycle, I refuse to feed the fear by buying into it as a reflection of reality. I label the fears for myself as they happen which gives me a better chance to realize that they are no different than my childhood fears of vampires, hobgoblins and glowing eyed wraiths. My adult fears are real in appearance, but this is just a mirage created by my adult mind to give these fears credibility.

Fears don't go away overnight, I still struggle with many, but I now have tools to work on them. Like childhood fears, adult fears are most often rooted in false beliefs, although those beliefs are not so simple as red eyed monsters under graveyards. If we work at it we can identify beliefs which are untrue, and learning to tolerate fears when they do arise, and not respond to them impulsively, enables us to survive them. Much like the poem about fear I learned many years ago, we let the fear wash over us, and after it has gone only we remain.

More Information

Does Depression have a Physical Cause?

Curing Doubts and Confusion with Knowledge and Explanations

The Power of Peers for Brain Health Recovery and Advocacy

An article describing Recovery International written by Brandon Staglin appears in the Huffington post this week. He writes:

As today in the United States, the healthcare system faces serious challenges meeting the treatment needs of the population with psychiatric illness, such recovery-oriented organizations can play essential, supportive roles in empowering individuals and their communities toward better wellness.

Through a longtime supporter of my Brain Waves webcast, advocate Anthony Ferrigno, I have learned of a peer-to-peer brain health support group called Recovery International(RI), a nationwide organization that, using cognitive-behavioral-therapy-like techniques, empowers consumers to train one another toward better resilience, stability, and recovery prospects. Anthony has enthusiastically endorsed RI’s positive influence in his own life and those of his peers, and has sent me documentation from a 2011 nationwide survey of RI participants orchestrated by the University of Illinois at Chicago, which shows many significant reductions in symptoms and in dependence on the healthcare system among participants. It stands to reason that, since cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) delivered by trained laypeople or even computer programs can be effective to treat depression and anxiety, supported peer-driven CBT-style instruction such as RI offers might help consumers live healthier lives. Anthony is quick to point out that RI seeks not to replace but to augment psychiatric care as a support tool to ultimately help participants live more independently. Anthony says that RI, founded in 1937 by Dr. Abraham Low, is unfortunately the recovery movement’s “best-kept secret”, but he evangelizes passionately to spread the word.

More Information

Effectiveness of Peer Support for Depression

HUFFPOST: The Power of Peers for Brain Health Recovery and Advocacy

Procrastination and Perfection

Procrastination has many faces and its consequences for some can be extreme. Waiting for the right motivation is one source of procrastination, see the previous blog post which discusses that subject in depth. Another source of procrastination can be perfectionism, the fear of making mistakes, and wanting to do things so that they turn out 'just right'.

A perfectionist may look at a simple task like house cleaning and throw their hands up in frustration saying "...I don't have ten hours today, I can't possibly finish this task, why even start?" This all or nothing attitude can stymie action. When looking at a project sometimes we see the totality of the problem, and the entire task appears enormous and unsolvable. The unsolvability of the problem tweaks our egos in an unpleasant way; we believe we need to be able to conceptualize the whole solution start to finish before we can even begin.

"Writer's block" can be understood as a variation on procrastination where the writer has a vague abstract notion of some ideal work they would like to complete although practically they can't find the individual elements necessary to put it together. Students often fall into this trap, especially if they are working on a project with a flexible deadline, or haven't received specific instructions. I think that this experience of being blocked by a vague idea of how you'd like the project to turn out is fairly generic and applies to a wide variety of tasks and isn't just a problem for students and writers.

In Recovery terminology we say self-consciousness destroys spontaneity and is caused by the fear of making mistakes. The more we think about how a project ought to be done perfectly the more we are unable to actually approach the problem. We become tangled in our intentions and what we imagine we might be able to do and we spend time worrying about mistakes we might make rather than actually doing anything at all. Our romantic notions of our great future accomplishment and how people will see us at the end of our endeavour don't match our practical skills of what we actually are able to do. We have an unrealistic assessments of our own abilities and how the task might be done and we refuse to accept our initial faltering efforts as having any value or worth.

Dr. Low describes one of his patients Irene, and how she became stuck in perfectionism:

Irene had been brought up as a perfectionist. Her ambition was to keep her home "perfectly clean"; to do a perfect job in the education of her children; to attain excellence as hostess, wife, friend, neighbour. Trivial errors, trifling mistakes and insignificant failures caused her to sweat and fret, to wear herself out with vexation and self-reproach. She worried, felt provoked at her fancied inefficiency, was perpetually flustered and confused. The confusion multiplied her record of bungled trivialities and botched irrelevancies. A vicious cycle developed: The more she was confused the more she bungled; the more persistently she bungled the more disturbing became her confusion. In the end, she lost confidence in her ability to do things "correctly," developed an exaggerated self-consciousness and lost her spontaneity. After joining Recovery she learned to be human and average, to permit herself to be like others, to bungle as much or as little as people bungle "on an average." She rejected the grotesque idea of the "perfect job" and the "flawless performance," and imbibed the now familiar Recovery doctrine to "have the courage to make mistakes in the trivialities of everyday life." If Irene continued to practice these Recovery doctrines in her everyday activities, if she practiced methodically to laugh at the paltry consequences of her trivial mistakes, she was certain to develop self-assurance and to rout her self-consciousness. Then her muscles will not be wedged in between two sets of antagonistic impulses, her spontaneity will be established on the firm ground of self-confidence, and her solid habits of thinking in terms of averageness will prevent her from becoming discouraged, despondent and depressed.

The FlyLady writes a practical housekeeping blog. She lives in the southern United States, Marla Cilley is her full name. She got the moniker FlyLady because she needed a user name for the forums on a website she joined and at the time she was a fly fishing instructor at the local college.

She has written a huge collection of articles; most are housekeeping tips addressed to women although she includes several very frank articles on depression and how she used practical tools to overcome her issues. Her writing is humorous, down to earth, and personable. She has a whole series of articles on procrastination and how perfectionism is at its root. The FlyLady writes:

What is it about two minutes? When we were told we had to do a two minute speech it seemed so long. When we stand in front of a microwave waiting impatiently for something to heat up it seems like it is taking forever. When I tell someone to do just two minutes, I get that look of “What good is that going to do?” Well let me tell you two minutes can accomplish more than you can ever dream if you will just quit whining about what it won’t do and show yourself what it can do!

This week we are taking the Two Minute Miracle Challenge! I am calling it a Miracle because you are going to be surprised by the results of just those two minutes. We refuse to believe that two minutes can make a dent in anything we need to accomplish! This is our perfectionism stopping us from even getting started.

Perfectionism is the root of procrastination. We tell ourselves that we don’t have time. The funny thing is that we don’t finish the sentence to say what we have been told our whole lives. The words should say, I don’t have time to do it RIGHT!

Since the day we were born we had these words drilled into our heads, “If you can’t do it right don’t do it at all!” We learned this part well! We still hear these words in our head. As children we were forced to do things over and over again. No one was ever really proud of what we did after all we were only kids. Our parent’s expectations were not realistic. We were told to go clean our rooms instead of giving us babystep instructions. We were expected to know what “Clean our rooms” meant. Yet there was no example of what that was, because our parents room was not clean either.

If as children we had been told we were going to play the Two Minute Game, we would have been so excited! It’s a two minute sprint to see what we can do and not a marathon that we would be doomed in the end, to repeat. Two minutes is not the end of the world. It is a focus on one thing; go pick up your dirty clothes.

The FlyLady emphasizes simple self-help methods and identifies a variety of techniques. The focus is on creating new habits, being patient with yourself and the job, and doing things in small steps. She gives specific instructions, breaking tasks down into basic manageable components.

Avoiding distractions is one of her recommendations, being aware that when you set out to do one job you shouldn't get side tracked by some other less important job. She uses the example of going to change a roll of toilet paper and how this can lead to spending and hour cleaning out the cabinet where the toilet paper is stored rather than keeping focused on the simple task. She talks about setting short time limits to both keep individual jobs manageable and ensure that a global effort is made.

Many of her suggestions challenge notions of completeness, for example she talks about vacuuming the middle of the room and just dealing with what is obvious and easy to reach and not getting caught up in the details. She recommends being aware of hotspots in your home, places that tend to collect clutter, and spending a small amount of time on them every week. Doing something on a task is always better than doing nothing, and she endorses even the smallest efforts.

"Housework done incorrectly still blesses your family", is a basic rule that she recommends to reinforce the notion that all efforts are helpful, and that your preconceived ideas about how things should be done are likely holding you back.

FlyLady posts are encouraging and sympathetic, although she has no tolerance for complaining. The tools that she talks about address topics like perfectionism, procrastination, patience, doing tasks in part acts (baby steps as she calls them), tolerating mistakes, being patient with yourself and having realistic expectations. These are all fundamental Recovery tools, and I think her blog is another example of the universality of these ideas.

I still struggle with details of basic home maintenance, FlyLady ideas have entered my life through my partner Melissa who discovered this website and has applied the method in our house for years. The basic details are contagious, simple, and entirely functional and have made a big difference in our lives.


More Information

The Complaining Habit

Perfectionism, Overwork and Burnout

A Place Beyond Procrastination

Procrastination is something that I think everyone has suffered from at some point. Some people seem to conquer it and keep under control any urges they have to defer unpleasant tasks. For some, its a bad habit, things get done at the last minute, and sometimes they are rushed and not done very well, but they get mostly, or sort of done.

These days I usually find myself in the first or second category. There were a few years when I did my taxes months before the deadline. This year I got them in a few weeks before the deadline, last year I was a few days late and I had to pay some minor penalty. This is all fairly average.

There are lots of web posts on procrastination, lots of lists of tips for how to get yourself motivated, and what the science is behind procrastination. An interesting article appears in the "Association for Psychological Science", the article "Why Wait? The Science Behind Procrastination" describes a variety of issues that lead to procrastination. From the article:

“What I’ve found is that while everybody may procrastinate, not everyone is a procrastinator,” says APS Fellow Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University. He is a pioneer of modern research on the subject, and his work has found that as many as 20 percent of people may be chronic procrastinators.

“It really has nothing to do with time-management,” he says. “As I tell people, to tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up.”

...

There’s no single type of procrastinator, but several general impressions have emerged over years of research. Chronic procrastinators have perpetual problems finishing tasks, while situational ones delay based on the task itself. A perfect storm of procrastination occurs when an unpleasant task meets a person who’s high in impulsivity and low in self-discipline. (The behavior is strongly linked with the Big Five personality trait of conscientiousness). Most delayers betray a tendency for self-defeat, but they can arrive at this point from either a negative state (fear of failure, for instance, or perfectionism) or a positive one (the joy of temptation). All told, these qualities have led researchers to call procrastination the “quintessential” breakdown of self-control.

...

“The future self becomes the beast of burden for procrastination,” says [Fuschia Sirois of Bishop’s University, in Canada]. “We’re trying to regulate our current mood and thinking our future self will be in a better state. They’ll be better able to handle feelings of insecurity or frustration with the task. That somehow we’ll develop these miraculous coping skills to deal with these emotions that we just can’t deal with right now.”

In Recovery we focus on trivialities, small details like deciding to do unpleasant tasks approximately on time, and this is a good way to practice and learn by taking small steps. We emphasize the importance of being average, and of accepting that temporary setbacks are a part of getting better.

While tax forms are due on a yearly basis, I struggle similarly with daily tasks. Getting dishes done by 10:30pm at night is always a bit of a stretch, sometimes they aren't done until 11pm. I occasionally resent the task and have never learnt to enjoy it, but this is a far cry from where I was 20 years ago.

In the late 1990s I stopped answering my phone, eventually it was disconnected because I didn't pay the bill. I went to a place beyond procrastination, and into a dark bleak zone of not caring or doing anything at all. The list of things left undone was endless- dishes, taxes, laundry, cleaning, paying bills, calling my parents, going to work, and just about every other basic element of life maintenance stopped. My symptoms of depression weren't of sadness, or apathy, but manifested more as a confused cloud of nothing, only occasionally punctuated by self-pity and a 3am run to the 24 hour store for a bag of groceries. No motivation, no interest, no action, no clear feelings or choices, no decisions, no life at all, hard-core nothing-ism.

Doing nothing for me arose because I was waiting for motivation. I was treating my mental state as I would my physical state if I had the flue. When I have the flue, the best thing is bed-rest, soup and time. After a few days with the flue if I've had a solid rest usually I feel better. I imagined that my motivational problem was similar. I was waiting to feel better enough to get back in the swing of things. I figured I just needed one more day of rest, another day in bed, one more sick day and then my motivation would come back... This for me was a devious trap, one that I fell into again and again, and it quite literally consumed years of my life.

In Recovery we say "be self-led not symptom-led". There is a good book by Robert Courtade which presents a clear and concise summary of the Recovery method titled "Self-help for Fear and Anger: The Recovery Method". He writes:

The basic Recovery Method idea is that a human should use will-power to choose the action rather than allowing symptoms to dictate behavior. Bob learnt the tools and is now in the driver's seat. His symptoms are no longer controlling his life. The symptoms he does have are less severe now and less limiting.

Reading about the tools is self-leadership. Attending group meetings is self-leadership. Spotting the tool that pertains to a situation and acting appropriately is behavioral self-leadership. To work effectively with someone who irritates us is self-leadership. The self-led person embraces secure thoughts. 

Developing leadership is a long term process. It requires effort. It can be uncomfortable. The benefits are significant and worth the effort. The alternative, which is to allow symptoms to guide us doesn't work.  

The trap that I had fallen into is a common one and the recipe for finding motivation that Recovery provides is not obvious in my opinion. Many people wait for motivation or inspiration before starting certain tasks, and for some people that spontaneous desire to take care of certain mundane chores comes without much effort- I personally have never been so blessed. In Recovery we say, "we don't wait to get better to do things, we do things to get better".

While there are many paths to procrastination, my particular false belief is this one; that if I wait a little bit longer, I will feel like doing the unpleasant task. I falsely believe that no matter how unpleasant the task is, the future me (for some unknown reason) will be more willing to do the task than the present me.

In David Burn's book "Feeling Good", he writes:

What, in your opinion, comes first- motivation or action? If you said motivation, you made an excellent, logical choice. Unfortunately, you're wrong. Motivation doesn't come first, action does! You have to prime the pump. Then you will begin to get motivated, and the fluids will flow spontaneously. Individuals who procrastinate frequently confuse motivation and action. You foolishly wait until you feel in the mood to do something. Since you don't feel like doing it you automatically put it off. Your error is your belief that motivation comes first and then leads to activation and success. But it is usually the other way around; action must come first, and the motivation comes later on.

In Recovery we say "anticipation is usually worse that realization", and this is something that I've also learnt to embrace. When I think about doing unpleasant tasks, usually I imagine that they will be much worse than they are. I know that my anticipation is often not realistic and that I tend to imagine that a task will be painful and horrible, when in fact it will just be dull. I do things in part-acts; when I work on my taxes I never sit down and say I'll finish this today, I say, I'll work on this for 45 minutes, I'm pretty sure I can work on it that long today.

I don't enjoy doing dishes, taxes, paying bills or taking out the garbage. I don't do these things promptly, efficiently, with any finesse or any joy. I also don't hate these tasks, or tell myself that I'm the kind of person who shouldn't have to do these things. I have stopped waiting to want to do dull and boring tasks. I have accepted that I will never want to do any of these things, but that these are things that I want to have done, and that while doing them may be unpleasant, it is never so unpleasant as not doing them at all.


More Information

Procrastination and Perfection

Does Depression have a Physical Cause?

Feelings are Not Facts

As a teenager I thought that Star Trek's Mr. Spock presented a fascinating cautionary tale of the problems with emotional suppression. In my early twenties I went to a university in my home town to study science, my choices somewhat inspired by sci-fi TV and movies. I met a lot of students in the various programs; anthropology, cultural studies, philosophy and psychology were popular subjects. At the time I believed in the importance of self-expression. I kept a very long and detailed diary and participated in a short story writing group. During this time I also suffered through a few of my first debilitating depressive episodes.

I strongly believed that being aware of my thoughts and expressing my feelings were important keys to a life well lived. "Know thyself" was a maxim which I believed could be achieved through self-expression and honest reflection on how I felt.

In Recovery there are a lot of subtle ideas. One of the most powerful tools in my opinion is "feelings are not facts", which would seem to contradict the idea that self-expression is good. As a student I had many conversations with people who were having trouble with their relationships, or struggling with difficult family dynamics where I advised them to "...take seriously how they felt", and "...not let others tell you how you feel", and that "...your feelings are real and important, do not ignore them".

I think these are popular ideas today, likely more popular than they were when Dr. Abraham Low wrote his books. We live in the age of the video blogger, where it seems everyone has a personal story to tell and will report with much detail exactly what they think and feel about a wide variety of things. While I still believe that there is value in self-expression I'm less convinced that this is the best route to self-knowledge. There is a very good book "Generation Me" written by Dr. Jean Twenge where she talks about behavioural trends and how they have changed in the last 50 years. She comments on the YouTube video blogger phenomena and is ultimately asking questions about whether it is healthy to focus so much on the self.

Generation Me is a very interesting book. One of the main things I got out of reading it was discovering the root of my belief that self-expression and introspection were healthy and good, whereas emotional suppression was clearly bad. These messages have been embedded in popular culture and media for many decades and I think are even more prevalent today than they were when I first attended university. In this decade we have a new Mr. Spock presented in the most recent Star Trek films who still represents this strange archetype of the intellectual / mystic and warns us about the dangers of emotional suppression, something that no mere human should attempt.

Dr. Low writes:

I want you to know that your feelings are not facts. They merely pretend to reveal facts. Your feelings deceive you. They tell you of danger when there is no hazard, of wakefulness when sleep was adequate, of exhaustion when the body is merely weary and the mind discouraged. In speaking of your symptoms your feelings lie to you. If you trust them you are certain to be betrayed into panics and vicious cycles. I said that your feelings lie to you, that they deceive and betray you. How can that be? How can feelings be true or false? If you are sad what has that to do with truth, deception or treachery? Feelings are either experienced or they are not. They are present or absent but never true or false. Thoughts alone possess the quality of truth and falseness. And if the patient's feelings tell lies they do so because an incorrect and deceptive thought is attached to them. The deception is accomplished by the thought, not by the feeling.

In learning about Dr. Low's ideas this particular one took some time to sink in for me. In Recovery meetings we are careful to balance the tool "feelings are not facts" with complementary tools like "you are entitled to your initial response" and "express your feelings not your temper". What these tools do in combination is acknowledge that your responses are yours and they are real responses, they remind you to express in a civilized way how you feel, and that the only thing you should consider repressing are your crudest and cruelest thoughts, your angry and fearful tempers.

The tool "feelings are not facts" is meant to remind you that just because you feel something that doesn't mean that this feeling is giving you accurate information about your experiences. As humans we have a complex nervous system where some input comes from the world, and some input is internal, and our mind blends the two into a seamless experience. We think we always have a clear handle on which is which, but the world is not easy to understand and our experience of it will always be filtered through our ideas.

In Recovery we don't ask you to ignore your feelings or to suppress them, but we do ask that you be skeptical of your feelings. We try to realize that feelings often arise due to our thoughts, and that our thoughts and beliefs may not be 100% correct, although they will seem to be. This is a little bit like the riddle where you ask whether a fish can explain what water is, despite being surrounded by it. The fish having never been out of the water has no idea that it is even in water or what water might be. Many people have a similar relationship with some of their ideas and beliefs. Some beliefs seem self evident. Nobody would keep hold of a belief that they thought wasn't true, but it doesn't then follow that all beliefs are true just because someone holds them.

Consider that maybe some of your beliefs may not be true, and that your feelings are tightly connected to these beliefs, and so while it is true that you feel certain things, those feelings may not be providing factual information about the world.

In a recent blog article I mentioned a book called "Feeling Good" by Dr. David Burns, he writes:

Even though your depressing thoughts may be distorted, they nevertheless create a powerful illusion of truth. Let me expose the basis for the deception in blunt terms- your feelings are not facts! In fact, your feelings per-se, don't event count- except as a mirror of the way you are thinking. If your perceptions make no sense, the feelings they create will be as absurd as the images reflected in the trick mirrors at an amusement park. But these abnormal emotions feel just as valid and realistic as the genuine feelings created by undistorted thoughts, so you automatically attribute truth to them. This is why depression is such a powerful form of mental black magic.

Once you invite depression though an "automatic" series of cognitive distortions, your feelings and actions will reinforce each other in a self-perpetuating vicious cycle. Because you believe whatever your depressed brain tells you, you find yourself feeling negative about almost everything. This reaction occurs in milliseconds, too quickly for you to be aware of it. The negative emotion feels realistic and in turn lends an aura of credibility to the distorted thought which created it. The cycle goes on and on, and you are eventually trapped. The mental prison is an illusion, a hoax you have inadvertently created, but is seems real because it feels real. 

The key concept here is that your mind and your beliefs play a role in your interpretation of the world and how you experience events. The feelings you have in response to the world will always seem true and correct, but may not be. The world can be a difficult place to understand, and when we misunderstand the world our distorted ideas can create distorted feelings. This doesn't mean that our feelings have no validity, quite the contrary, our feelings are undeniably a huge part of our experience. Our feelings can also become a part of our illness. Keeping in mind that our feelings are not facts should give those of us with emotional difficulties hope. Much of what we feel is a reflection of reality, some is not. Figuring this difference out helps us to live healthier lives.

Leonard Nimoy, the first actor to play Mr. Spock, passed away in 2015 at the age of 83. Despite the role he played, an alien who worked to purge all emotion from his being, his departure from this world left his fans with a bittersweet sadness as they reflected on his work and life. That response, while paradoxical given the reserved and stoic character Nimoy developed, is in every way a genuine one and the sort of feeling we should take seriously and express.

More Information

How Does This Work?

An Austin Psychologist Talks About CBT

Curing Doubts and Confusion with Knowledge and Explanations

Before I attended any Recovery meetings I read several books and lots of web articles about mental health, psychology and in particular depression. I struggled with depression for years, and I didn't have a clear handle on why my symptoms would come and go. I believed it was partly a genetic disposition, but I also had the idea that if I could understand what wasn't quite right about my mind that would lead to a fix, or at least to less suffering.

I spent a lot of time being angry with my parents for the decisions that they made, angry with the circumstances that lead to my isolation, and frustrated with the injustices of the world. Some of my frustrations were abstract, the town was awful, the problems with the environment were horrid, political and economic problems were serious and unsolvable, the list of issues seemed long and bleak. Some of my frustrations were simple, my clothes were bad because I didn't have a good income, my apartment was small and on a noisy street, my friends were focused on things that I thought were shallow or the people I knew that I liked weren't interested in spending time with me.

I thought that being honest with myself about the various short straws that life had dealt me was part of knowing myself and knowing my own troubles would lead to a better attitude, dispelling my depression, and hopefully a better social life and a better job. I kept journals where I wrote a lot of these frustrations down, and would have long chats with old friends in pubs about how the world had gone to hell in a hand basket.

Thinking and reading about these things and analyzing them seemed to me to be a way to know what to do about them. This sounds very reasonable, but just reading about what sort of experiences and ideas create problems, and methods for dealing with them isn't the same as actually doing something about them.  Here is what Dr. Abraham Low has to say about trying to learn your way out of confusion:

Did that perchance mean that her mind was slipping? Confusion was with her all the time, in every place, on all occasions. If she only knew what it all meant. If she could only understand. This was her state of mind when I first saw her. Every fiber in her ached to get understanding, to be shown what was right and what wrong, to escape her doubts, to relieve her ignorance. And doubts can be cured, she thought, by explanations, ignorance through knowledge. That called obviously for teaching, discussion, exploration and talk. In this, Gertrude acted the part of the intellectual. It is the intellectual's way of thinking that problems, issues and perplexities are the result of ignorance, and the proper remedy is education which he calls enlightenment. Confusion, reasons the intellectual, is created by darkness, and darkness is dispelled by light, and once the individual "sees the light" impulses become docile and sensations turn reasonable. The scheme, I admit, is easy to understand; it represents the purest logic and the most attractive reasoning. But does it work? Is it successful?

But does it work? Is it successful? Can we cure doubts and confusion with knowledge and explanations?

Low's question is rhetorical, and I agree with his subsequent explanation that teaching and knowledge do not provide a cure for nervous afflictions. It's taken me a long time to appreciate the idea. I was a university student for many years, I collected several diplomas and believed that knowledge was the cure for confusion. I no longer believe this, at least insofar as mental health is concerned. Knowledge and information have their place, but there are many problems that will never be solved just by reading, thinking and reflecting.

In Recovery meetings we spend 1/2 of the time reading a chapter from Dr. Abraham Low's book and we spend the other 1/2 of the time discussing examples. An example is an illustration of the use of his method. All members are encouraged to practice the Recovery method between meetings in order to have the experience of being aware of temper.

An example is a scenario where a group member relates how they worked themselves up. The group member describes both the physical sensations and internal thoughts they had during the situation, explaining how they took notice of their temperamental or emotional state and what they did to remain civil and handle the situation.

The other members participate by trying to understand the process that the person presenting the example had to go through in order to manage their temper and express their feelings. Every attendee takes a role, one person reads through the steps for reporting an example, another member "takes" the example by acting as referee and ensuring that everyone stays on track, the rest of the attendees take turns spotting on the example by explaining which tools are relevant. The procedure is intentionally repetitive and formulaic. After several meetings members start to memorize the tools and think automatically about which situations are the sort that will tend to result in an angry or fearful response and what to do when those situations arise. Dr. Low writes:

That the brain receives the greater part of its knowledge from the muscles ought to be plain to anyone who is not blinded by the glamor of fanciful theories. Knowledge means experience, and the bulk of our experience stems from our actions, and our actions are carried out by our muscles mainly. I do not wish to deny that a great deal of experience is gathered from vision and hearing, touch, smell and taste. But the type of knowledge secured from these sources is chiefly informative. Practical knowledge, the knowledge of how to behave, of what to do at a certain time in a given situation comes to you from acting and practicing, that is, from the activity of your muscles. With regard to that variety of knowledge and experience that tells you what to do and what not to do there can be hardly any doubt that the muscles are pre-eminently the teachers and educators of the brain.

The Recovery method is presented by Dr. Low as a learned skill like bicycle riding. He argues, in a very literal fashion, that your muscles will teach your brain. You can read about the gyroscopic principles of circular motion and how a bicycle remains stable and balanced while moving despite standing on just two wheels, but until you get on a bicycle and try to ride it none of this information is helpful. Understanding the physics of gyroscopes isn't either a sufficient or a necessary condition for being able to ride the bicycle. Practice and repetition are what is needed.

While I have changed my mind about how to approach mental health issues, and I no longer treat myself as a puzzle that needs investigation, that hasn't made it easy all of a sudden. Practice takes time and repetition and effort, and while the recommendation is simple it is not easy.

I keep attending Recovery meeting because they give me a good place to practice spotting my tempers, and thinking through the common traps that we all fall into. If you'd like to join us we meet Tuesdays at 7:30pm.

More Information

Does Depression have a Physical Cause?

Meetings Activities and Key Concepts

The Complaining Habit

We talk about complaining at Recovery meetings, and I think this is one of the easiest things that you can change in your life that will make a difference to your mental health.

The idea that complaining, and people who complain a lot, can be bothersome probably isn't new to anyone. One of my best friends in town is a die hard anti-complainer. I appreciate his attitude, although if you ask him about it he will just tell you that complaining is a nuisance and that he has no patience for listening to it.

On the How Does this Work page I make a few remarks about complaining, and here I'd like to expand on the idea. Here is what Dr. Abraham Low says about the complaint hobby:

"Why did Mona feel the urge to rant about her experience for hours and tell her story "to everybody who would listen?" A story endlessly repeated becomes stale and hackneyed and monotonous. The listener is bound to respond with weariness, boredom and disgust. If Mona's objective was to convince her listeners, to gain their consent and endorsement a concise recital of the episode would have served the purpose far more effectively than the tiresome rehashing of the story which the countless rehearsals were certain to deprive of its freshness and plausibility. Let me state briefly that this ceaseless recounting of experiences is at the root of what may be called the "complaint hobby." My patients are generally addicted to this hobby, and Mona, in her pre-Recovery days, was one of its devotees."

In the same chapter Low makes a connection between complaining and believing you are in the right, he says:

"All of a sudden he is aroused to a fit of anger. He fumes and raves; he is indignant and fairly panting for a fight. What else can that be but strength, vigor and vitality? And that insult that was hurled at him by "that rascal" was clearly and undoubtedly an injustice, an unprovoked attack. That he is right and the other fellow wrong cannot possibly be questioned. In a "clearcut case" of this kind, who but a fool or knave could challenge his premises and conclusions? The temperamental spell re-establishes as with magic his intellectual claim to validity and his romantic claim to vitality. No wonder he is eager to rehash and rehearse and repeat the story to "everybody who would listen." He has found a convincing story and interested listeners, and he is going to make the utmost of the opportunity."

Some of our attendees ask reasonable questions about the Recovery language and why we use particular turns of phrase. The general idea is to use terms that are neutral and don't reduce individuals to a type of person.  We don't say that Mona is a 'depressed complainer', but rather we say she is a 'nervous person' who has the 'complaining habit'. Being a nervous person is something that we can't easily change and that we are willing to accept. We have accepted that we struggle with certain situations and learning how to deal with them is why we attend Recovery meetings. However, the complaining habit is something that we can change especially if we understand it.

One of our key tools in Recovery is spotting, and while some temperamental behavior can be tough to spot, I've usually found that complaining is easy to recognize in myself. I know when I'm just wasting time belly-aching about some guy at work that I don't like that much. This is a pass time with my co-workers who all agree that so-and-so is a big problem because they don't work very hard, and somebody-or-other in that other office is a huge pain, and why does the director get paid so much and make such bad decisions, and on and on. Its an old story.

This sort of day-to-day griping about petty annoyances is just low level noise in our lives that many of us simply accept as normal. Dr. Low points out that this habit can become much more serious, and that nervous individuals can become addicted to rehashing their problems over and over again with anyone who will listen. It is important to stop for a second and think about the impact of this more serious behavior. There comes a point where you are no longer just passing some idle time at the coffee machine with minor complaints and gossip, which while not productive, is at least not too damaging. There is a point where your complaints become so intense and repetitive that no one really wants to listen any more and this starts to eat away your sense of self worth.

Where previously your complaining habit gave you a sense of being right, and perhaps you even found some people who agreed with you, it can take on a poisonous effect where it fills up your mind with destructive thoughts. You may feel the need to repeat the behavior because it gives you a quick little kick of vitality, and that quick fix becomes like any other addiction, something that alienates those around you, and keeps you locked in a dark, miserable, and unhappy place.

I think that the ideas in Dr. Abraham Low's books are somewhat universal and have been formulated in various ways by many other individuals. Eckhart Tolle is an author and speaker who draws from a variety of sources, including classical philosophy, religion, Zen meditation as well as his own experience. I think his advice is extremely practical and nuanced as well as being easy to understand.

He has written a number of books, you can also find excerpts of his talks on YouTube. He has a lot of interesting things to say about complaining in this YouTube video:



Eckhart Tolle gives a great example about being served cold soup in a restaurant which is filled with much humor as he pretends to be the unsatisfied customer. In his talk he gives a window into the unhappy customer's thoughts and reports the internal dialogue that I think we can all easily relate to:

"That shouldn't be happening, the soup is cold it should be hot."

"I'm paying all this money, and what am I getting here? Cold soup!"

"They should... I'm going to talk to someone about it."

Something in you loves going on about it, and if you can find someone to talk to and agree with you about it you can energize each other mutually.

"Did you taste that soup too? Wasn't it dreadful?"

"Oh yah, absolutely dreadful."

A very different thing is taking it to the kitchen and saying "The soup is cold, do you mind heating it up again please? ... No problem." you're not even complaining you are just stating a fact.

Compare this with you going to the kitchen and saying "How dare you serve me this cold soup?!" When you do this you are in a state of resistance to what is. What is - is the cold soup. You can substitute anything in your life for this. There are far worse things than cold soup.

You are in a state of resistance to the is-ness of this moment which is the cold soup. There is the dysfunctional, non-effective way to deal with it which is to complain either internally or to someone else in the hope to get some feedback "...yes, yes you are right..." which something in you loves. 

You can temporarily add the position of rightness, and now of course somebody has to be wrong. It's the kitchen staff, and the whole place, and it's the people, all the chefs of the world... somebody has to be wrong, and there is something satisfying about living in denial of the is-ness of the present moment. That is why it is so all-pervasive in humans, there is some payoff for humans; what is the payoff? It is unconscious of course, and making it conscious you are able to step out of it.

In this moment you cannot argue with the is-ness of the cold soup. Of course you have a choice, you can eat the cold soup and say "that tastes okay too...", or you can say "...it doesn't taste good but I'm eating it anyway...", or you can take it to the kitchen and say "...can you please heat this up, it's cold" without falling into the delusion that you are right and someone else is wrong and attempting to strengthen your sense of self by making someone else wrong.

You personalize the whole thing when you say "How dare you serve me this cold soup!? Me!"

To the ego that is very satisfying. The body knows this isn't a good state, if you examine the physiological things that accompany that state you would see that it affects your blood circulation, it affects your heart, it affects your breathing, it affects the entire energy field of your body which is contracted. Now imagine humans living most of their lives in this state of denial, what it does to their bodies is a small thing compared to what it does to their well being.

If you think that it is okay to complain on a regular basis I hope you will stop for a moment and consider that this is something that you can change. It has an impact on you and those around you. There are better ways to interact with your friends and co-workers. Recommending that you stop complaining isn't the same as saying just roll over and endure suffering, there is always something you can do to change your situation. Talking about it might be the first step, but it should never be the only step, take action to change what you don't like about the world and your life, be aware of the things that you can't change and make decisions about whether to accept them or to remove yourself from them.

If you feel stuck and as though you can't stop complaining, that the world is too big, too difficult, and too troublesome you are average. At Recovery meetings we talk about changing habits in small steps, you can come to a meeting and talk to us about strategies for complaining less.


More Information

Who Can Attend

Procrastination and Perfection