The Website of Dr. Mark Goulston

Water seeks its own level,
so make sure the water you are in is pure instead of polluted.

Step 1: Make a list of the most positive, uplifting, low maintenance (easy to please, difficult to upset) people you admire and respect and know or would like to know.

Step 2: Do everything you can to develop a relationship with these people. One way to do that is to figure out what you can do for them that would make their lives better from their point of view (for instance one thing I do is write thoughtful, positive, heartfelt and sincere book reviews if they have one) and because of who they are (i.e. non-takers and non-scorekeepers) this may cause them to want to return your generosity with their own. For me, because they are indeed so special, just the gift of their very precious time is more than enough payment.

Step 3: The more you develop relationships with these wonderful people, who make you want to be a better person, the more repulsed you will be by the takers, whiners, excuse makers, bullies and high maintenance (easy to upset, difficult to please) people to the point where any contact with them will feel like nails on a chalkboard. That will drive you to sever your relationship with the negative people. Another reason you will want to sever your relationship with them is because of the negative part of your personality (the blamer, whiner, excuse maker in you) that is kept alive by continuing a relationship. Allowing that negative part of you to continue is a way of dishonoring the wonderful people you are now bringing in your life and standing in the way of your becoming the better person that they make you want to become.

A terrific resource for connecting with the right people is Keith Ferrazzi’s megabest seller, Never Eat Alone and if you really want to make a commitment to your personal improvement and achieve breakthrough results using the power of relationship check out Keith’s online university, Relationship Masters Academy.

1. Say/Do ratio stinks – When it comes to what they say about “succession” compared to what they do, they’re not even close to taking action.
2. “Yes but” any and every plan that is suggested to them – They consistently point out why any particular succession plan won’t work, instead of looking for how to make it work.
3. Don’t initiate discussions about succession – Those who resist succession rarely if ever initiate a discussion about succession much less do strategic planning, provide action steps with a time line and assigning role responsibilities to people who will carry it out
4. People are afraid to bring up succession to them – Often a domineering, if not bullying figure, people are already intimidated by them, so why in the world would they take the chance of annoying them?
5. Work is their life – They don’t have any hobbies or anything that produces the same adrenaline rush as the power they wield at work.  As one such CEO told me, “When you go from being somebody to being anybody, it’s the same as being nobody.”  Even though they might write checks, they are not passionately involved in non-profits or charities.
6. Work is their family – They are usually not capable of giving their undivided attention to their children or spouse often causing their family to retaliate for it with drugs and conspicuous consumption, a la home(s) decorating and/or their spouse becoming overly involved with and living through their children.  If they are fortunate, their family has subbed in with hobbies, teachers, coaches and/or parents of friends.
7. Won’t listen at work – They appear exclusively focused on the bottom line and their mantra is don’t bring me a problem unless you bring me a solution.
8. Overcompensated – They are frequently overcompensated for the real value they bring their company (which has long passed since they started the company or built it through its “go go” days, but no one dare says that “the emperor has less value.”  The CEO also often has a fear of losing this plus perks and prestige if they turn over the company to others.
9. Increasingly more irritable – They are not stupid and the more they consciously realize or unconsciously feel they don’t truly deserve what they’re paid (i.e. they certainly wouldn’t pay someone else the same if that other person gave the same value as they are currently giving) the more irritable they are.
10. They have fearful aggression – When high strung show dogs are afraid they growl (remember the movie, “Best in Show?”).  This is a more intense level than 9 above.  The more they are afraid that their real value (which is less than they what they are compensated) will be exposed and that they will be called on the carpet to prove it, the more aggressive they become in hopes that keeping people on defensive will keep them off the scent.

1. “How committed are you to succession?”
2. “Please offer me evidence of your commitment to succession as in strategic planning, action steps with a timeline and assigning role responsibilities to people who will carry it out?”
3. “If you are truly committed to succession, do I have your permission to seek out resources within and outside the firm to make that succession a success and to present them to you?” Then go and find those resources.

Book Review: “Still Surprised” by Warren Bennis
a.k.a. How to Develop a Moral Compass

I was never a big time crook, although I have swiped a few “Sweet and Low’s” and unopened mini bottles of ketchup and mustard in my time.  And I was never a perpetrator of animal cruelty, although I do confess to incinerating a few ants with a magnifying glass years ago.

So how is that I have grown into someone who can’t stand to lie to trying hard to return money if I find it on the street and to literally feeling pain if I kill a fly?

How did I find my moral compass?

Rightly or wrongly, accurately or paranoidly, I experienced the world as judgmental, critical, conditional, dismissive and a number of additional negative ways.  I think you get the drift.  To get even with that world that I felt powerless towards I developed a cutting sarcastic wit and deep cynicism (I was not going to stand by quietly anytime I saw kindness, generosity and/or graciousness and not try to cut it down).

The greatest gift that it was my good fortune to receive has been a string of mentors who saw the good in me that I didn’t, believed in me when I couldn’t, rooted for me when I wanted to quit, and kicked my butt when I needed it.

I know that all of them wanting nothing more from me in return than my “paying it forward” to others what they had given so freely to me.

I have tried to do that, but I have always wanted to do more and this I hope will be in small measure a chance to do that.

In the last five years, four of my five mentors have died (and I’m even tearing up with gratitude laced with sadness as I write these words).  My last and perhaps most profound one is happily still alive, productive, articulate, wise and has just released his memoir: Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership (Josey-Bass, August 16, 2010, $27.95).

Having a mentor like Warren Bennis not only makes you want to do a better job, it makes you want to be a better person.  They can transform you from a cynical, sarcastic, chip on your shoulder victim into someone who acts to help the world and wouldn’t hurt a fly.

If you read Warren’s book, you will be much the better for it.  If you have that parent or mentor who loved and supported you, it will cause you to contact them (or their family if they have died) to tell them how much you appreciated them.  If you didn’t have such a parent or mentor, it will cause you to feel an ache for what you might have become if you had.  More importantly it will inspire you to give to the world what you never received and when you do, you will be transformed.

Here is my amazon review:

Read at Your Own Risk, August 21, 2010

By	Mark Goulston – See all my reviews

This review is from: Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership (J-B Warren Bennis Series) (Hardcover)

“One of the best things about hearing people say such nice things about you is that it gives you something to live up to” – Warren Bennis speaking at a USC event honoring him and after a number of people spoke to talk about his impact on them.

Warren Bennis is not merely respected by the people whose lives he has touched, he is beloved. To so many — including Howard Schultz at Starbucks, David Gergen of CNN, Sid Harmon of Harmon Kardon and Betsy Myers advisor to President Obama — he is not just that mentor or friend that makes you want to be a better person, he is frequently that parent you wish you had. For those who were homesick for a home they never had, and sick from the one they did, Warren’s loving mentoring provided them with a home at last.

What does this have to do with this engaging, heart warming, and uplifting memoir? If you read it, Warren doesn’t tell you how to be the kind of leader, parent and mensch that the best part of you wants to be, he shows you how with a story that is seasoned with humanity and spiced with humility and is so memorable that it will easily serve as a guide and template for you.

I don’t want to give away too much, but one story that makes me smile was about Warren having a conversation with undergraduate friends at Antioch about meeting a German woman in a bar in Germany at the end of WWII and going back to her room to do what you do in such a situation. He explains that going to such a bar, meeting such a woman and going back to her room was not something one such as he should do. He then talks about waking up the next morning and with the sheets pushed to the side realizing she had a prosthetic leg. When he shared this with friends at Antioch they told him that he must publish it as an essay in one of the school’s publications. He did that whereupon he was suddenly launched into “superstar” status for the rest of his years at college.

Why “read at your own risk” as the title for this review?

As you read this book and understand how Warren more than grew up, but evolved into such a beloved person, it may give you an ache to have had him as a mentor or parent if you haven’t had either. And if the lack of either is great, that ache can be profound. On the other hand there will be few other books that you will read that will help you to become the parent or mentor to others that you never had. And if you can do that, the ache will go away and you too might become someone who is beloved by others. And there is no better transformation for you than to give onto others what was never given onto you.

If my lack of objectivity is betrayed by my love and appreciation for him, that’s MY story and I’m sticking with it. It is also why I dedicated my book, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone to him which in great part is an elaboration of something he has taught me by who he is much more than what he does: “When you deeply listen to people, get where they are coming from AND care about them when you’re there, they’re more likely to do what you’d like them to do.”

Child: Daddy’s home!
Wife (thinking, “So what?” but covering up her resentment with an ever so lifeless): Yeah, okay.

How is it that the “hail the conquering (and hard working) hero!” reception turned into, “We got a big problem, that you need to take care of?” (a.k.a. “Nothing you do is as important as this!”)

Can this be the same couple that were rapturously in love just a few years back?

What happened?

I recently sat down with Elizabeth Danziger, author of Get To The Point. She casually offered an explanation that I wish I knew and appreciated three children ago.

Liz, eminently qualified as a mother of four, said: “Children on a daily basis stretch and use up their mom’s patience to its limit and beyond. And with each subsequent child that patience gets stretched thinner and thinner, until there is nothing left to enable them to be patient with their husband. So when he comes home and tentatively walks into the house, not knowing what he will be confronted with, that pushes his wife to be impatient. When he comes home the least bit preoccupied with something from work, that does the same. If he says something, he’s wrong; if he says nothing, he’s wrong.”

Viewing your wife as completely drained of patience (which you can experience when you are asked to watch your kids on a Sunday without the aid of a nanny or an activity you can just throw them into) can give you an understanding of what it’s like for her. And if you let it sink in, it may cause you to feel less upset and resentful of her.

Furthermore if you understand that your wife’s bond to the children is very deep emotionally, you might realize that she is very committed to protecting your children from hurt. So when she is losing patience with them and it is crossing over into frustration and then anger, she needs to manage than anger lest she be the one who will hurt them. And one of the quickest ways to manage it is to focus on something you’ve done wrong and displace it onto you.

In fact show me a wife and mother who always makes her husband feel he’s wrong and I’ll show you a woman who is constantly using up all of her energy – and patience – to not react angrily towards her children and needing to constantly deflect it onto her husband and away from them.

And the solution?

First if you as the husband can truly understand the joint phenomenon of your wife’s patience being used up and also her needing to deflect her anger at your kids at you, you may be able to let go some of your hurt and anger with her.

Second, if you say to your wife, “Our kids beat the hell out of you today and it’s all that you can do to keep from going off on them. Isn’t that true?” she may blurt out, “I’m a terrible mother” as she vents her own disappointment in herself. If that happens, you have an opportunity to be tender and tell her that she’s not a bad mother and that they are exhausting and that she’s a good mother. That may not only give her relief, you might get lucky tonight.

Third, it doesn’t just have to be the sole responsibility of the husband to deal with this situation. If you’re a mom who feels this way, you can reach out to your husband when he comes home or better yet on the phone before he comes home and say, “I hate to ask you this after you’ve had a long day at work, but I am at my wits end with the kids and I need a break. So when you get home could you please take over for an hour or two ?” You’d be surprised how many husbands would jump at the chance to help out.

Why would they do that? Because your reaching out to them for help, feels a lot better than telling them what they’ve done wrong.

Is it “3 strikes and you’re out” or “third time’s the charm?”

After decades of working with married couples, I have realized that there’s not much I can do if peoples’ mindsets are focused on being right instead of  making their relationship better.

As a result I now focus on partners that are motivated to make their marriage a success and are willing to give up having to be right to do so.  Those couples are often the ones where both partners are marrying for the third time or at least one is for the third time (usually the moneyed one) and the other for at least the second.

It doesn’t always hold true, but it seems that a couple in a first marriage often doesn’t know what to do when each person grows in a different direction and apart from the other.  Rather than accepting this as a reality, they launch full bore into making the other person wrong when in fact they are just different and growing into who they are meant to be.

Then the second marriage is about doing the opposite of the first as a reaction to the other person being wrong.  It is not about admitting and actually taking personal responsibility for problems in that first marriage.  In other words, the narcissistic part of each person’s personality is alive and well and entitled.  If they haven’t taken that personal responsibility for problems, they are often just as likely to run into problems –maybe different ones, but problems nevertheless – the second time around.

The third time may be the charm because after being a two time loser, it becomes more difficult to keep blaming the other person entirely.  What’s the saying?  “Have a failed marriage once, shame on them; have a failed marriage twice, shame on you.” And when you get older, just not wanting to fight is a legitimate resolution to arguments, whereas when you are younger that would seem to be too avoidant and there is often an obsessive need to deal with and resolve all the issues. Also by the time you’re on a third marriage, you’ve gone from believing you’re invincible to wanting to make it to the finish line of life with peace of mind.

Now there are many who will not remarry a third time.  For the ones that do, there are usually habits they have learned that will help their third marriage to succeed (and ones that first and second marriages would do well to learn as well).

12 Habits of Healthy and Happy Third Marriages

1. Talking “with” instead of “at” your mate. Let their body language be your guide. When you’re talking “at” your partner, they’ll tense up. When you’re talking “with” them, they’ll most certainly relax.
2. Tuning in — instead of tuning out — to what your mate is saying. When you mind begins to wander, stop and remember that what your partner is saying is important to them whether you’re interested or not.
3. Remembering to thank your mate. Not thanking your spouse for being considerate, thoughtful or kind makes them feel unappreciated and foolish for caring about you.
4. Saying, “I’m sorry,” instead of becoming defensive. When you mess up, the sooner you sincerely apologize the sooner your mate can stop resenting you.
5. When you say, “I’m sorry,” follow through. An apology buys you another chance. However, if you keep making the same mistake, apologies not only seem empty, but annoying as well.
6. Being on time. Frequently keeping your spouse waiting is not only inconsiderate; it’s arrogant.
7. Not Jumping to conclusions. Presuming that you know what your partner feels — and why — without first getting all the facts is only going to push them away.
8. Not playing the victim. This behavior not only accuses your spouse of hurting you, but adds insult to injury by implying that they’re doing it intentionally, when that may not be the case.
9. Not making the other person wrong. Rather than realizing and accepting that it takes two to make a mistake, they always blame problems on the other.
10. Talk well about your spouse behind their back. When you bad mouth your spouse to others, this not only adds to the list of secrets you keep from your mate, but also tells others how little you respect them.
11. Have ground rules for dealing with a difference of opinion – Having ground rules such as agreeing to not use words like “never” and “always” or agreeing that neither person can become abusive and unrelentingly accusatory – a couples’ disagreement will prevent a disagreement from deteriorating and sometimes reaching the point of cruel words or an action that can’t be taken back.
12. Knowing that doing something once is not enough. If you only temporarily do the above — and don’t continue to monitor yourself to keep from slipping back into bad habits — you’re teasing your partner with changing. You’re also kidding yourself that you’re committed to improving your marriage, when really you’re not.

The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again…and Stay There (Perigee, $15.95)

If you give a child a fish, you feed them for a day;
if you teach a child to fish, you feed them for a lifetime;
but if you teach a child to learn, you feed them for a lifetime
and they don’t have to just eat fish.
- Tim Gallwey, creator of the Inner Game series

Ahh… You’re on vacation and your family is (mostly) getting along. Mom and dad are taking a breather from work and both are almost able to relax. And even though most of you are still checking your Blackberrys and iphones too often, things are going pretty well.

But right around the corner is “back to school” and “back to work” and “back to stress.” One of the most stressful things can be helping your child successfully make the transition back to school and in all likelihood they are not going to be the best sports about it are not “going to go gently into that good car pool or bus.”

What is your role as a parent? I would vouch to say that it is to prepare your child to reach age 18 and be confident, focused, passionate, persevering, patient, resilient, goal-oriented and to handle disappointment and frustration well. Probably most of all it is to teach your child good judgment and the ability to make good decisions especially when they are under pressure.

If developing good judgment is the outcome you’re seeking, what is the best way to interact with your children that results in that? And just as importantly, what are the ways you interact with them and act around them (monkey see, monkey do) that prevent them from developing it?

Clearly if you do things for your child that they should learn to do for themselves you will not only prevent them from developing judgment, you will also prevent them from developing self-reliance, resourcefulness, courage and commitment. And when their peers from India, China and Brazil — who have developed all these qualities — become their bosses, you will prevent your children from being promotable or possibly even hirable.

If you tell them what to do, you will not cripple them as much as if you do it for them, but they will become dependent on you and not develop self-reliance.

If however, you believe in them more than your anxious need to be in control, if you ask them what they think they should do and why and if finally you tell them to give it a try and report back, that will teach them self-reliance, independence and judgment.

Why does your being on a vacation have to do with this?

You have the chance while you’re on a walk or driving casually (vs. their rushing to school and your rushing to work) to talk with your children instead of at them.

And when you do, ask them questions with sincere curiosity about hypothetical situations in the future such as:

“Which of your friends goes too far and wouldn’t surprise you if they got into a lot of trouble this year?” And after they answer, don’t tell them not to be their friends; instead ask them, “Why do you think they’ll get into trouble?” And then after they answer, merely say, “Hmm, that makes sense. Maybe if you’re a good friend, you might be able to help them with that. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.”

“Which of your subjects do you think you have to stay on top of the homework and which do you think you could do at the last minute if you had to?” And then when they answer that, again say, “Hmm, makes sense to me.”

With such questions you are planting the seeds in them to: a) thinking ahead; b) developing perspective; c) developing judgment.

Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of your vacation.

Please share in the comments your approaches to teaching your child self-reliance, resourcefulness, independence, resilience and judgment.

To learn how to be a better communicator, check out: “Just Listen” (Amacom, $24.95)

The year is 2020 and in their First Annual Offsite entitled, “Mission Earth,” the Christian, Judaic, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Bahai, Mormon, Taoist, Confucian, Shinto and all other Gods meet on the far side of the Moon.

It has been a lively and “spirited” week, filled with celebration. At the end, there is consensus and complete agreement as a progress report is handed in regarding, “Mission Earth.”

All agree: “They actually did it! Mankind actually saved themselves and their planet and are on a path to continued health and prosperity.”

Instrumental to that accomplishment, all the Gods agree that various regions of mankind stopped using the names of their Gods to further their personal and selfish agendas and instead all lived to carry out the spirit of each of their Gods which was to care for and take better care of their fellow man, woman and child as well as all living creatures and the planet Earth itself.

In your comments, please state what it is that Mankind specifically does and stops doing between now and 2020 so that all your Gods would come to the conclusion above.

Mother: Do you think he’ll put his fist through the wall?
Father: Let’s hope it’s not his head!
And so begins another evening of pillow talk between the parents of an angry, sullen teenager.

What is well known, but kept private is a dynamic psychotherapists see frequently in families that often contributes to teenage rage.

That occurs when one parent is overbearing and overly controlling (either the mother micromanaging her child’s schoolwork and college application process or the father pushing the child to have more drive, motivation and be more aggressive in athletics) and the other is ineffective at keeping the over-the-top parent in check. This results in many teenagers feeling resentment towards the overbearing parent and contempt mixed with pity for the other parent who can neither stand up for the child of for themselves to the over-controlling one.

Add to this the frequent scenario where teenagers see both parents putting on a very pleasant (and to the teen, phony) facade to the outside world, while carrying on with the abusive/passive behavior at home, and that hypocrisy can push many teenagers over the brink (this may have been a possibility in the famous case of Lyle and Erik Menendez who were convicted of killing their parents in August, 1989).

Among one of teenagers’ best traits is a deep sense of justice, but along with it unfortunately comes a sense of outrage regarding the injustice of this family dynamic and the hypocritical behavior of parents who act so differently in public than at home.

To check if this may be what’s going on with your sullen teenager, ask them in a matter of fact way while going for a drive or during some activity (since they hate unsolicited “heart to heart” talks which always feel like a lecture):

- “What’s the most frustrated and angry you have ever felt with your mom/dad or me?”
- “How bad was it for you?”
- “What did it make you want to do?”
- “What did you do?”

Then say (and mean it): “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was so bad?” Allow for the tears of relief you might unleash in them for finally getting this off their chest.

Finish with: “When I see you doing or not doing something that I believe could hurt you or your future, how do you want me to be with you? I mean, do you want me to say nothing? To wait and let you find out for yourself? To ask your permission to tell you what I see? Or what?”

Then whatever they say, use that approach.

See Also: About Teen Violence: It’s the Rage

* Soldiers’ Suicide Rate Tied to Access to Problems at Home
* Suicide Rate Among Soldiers Continues on Record Pace
* Saving Soldiers from Suicide
* Army Report Finds Rising Suicide Rate Among Troops

Every time a human being kills himself or herself,
God thunders down at us,
“That is not the reason I gave you the gift of life…”
and then God cries.

In the time it takes for you to read this:

• someone in your neighborhood feels they don’t have anything to live for
• someone in your town wishes they were dead
• someone in your city is thinking of a way to kill themselves
• someone in your state has purchased those pills, that gun or decided on that location to carry it out
• someone in this country is heading off to do it
• and someone in this world just did it.
  

Although the pain and despair that drove that person to it might be over (suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem), it has not yet begun for those who loved and cared about that person (regardless of whether they felt it).  And after the minutes to hours to sadly days when that person’s body is discovered, the lives of those who loved them will never be the same again.  For the rest of their lives you won’t be able to look that family member or friend or co-worker or fellow soldier in the eye and not see at least a small portion where the light is forever gone because of the death of the person who just killed themselves.

But this blog entry is meant to be life saving, so to help us all save lives I would ask that any of you who have seriously considered suicide please share what caused you to choose life over death.

You can send leave a comment at: Let’s Save Some Lives or send me one by email to: mgoulston@markgoulston.com where I will post it and delete your email address permanently. God bless you; God bless all of us. If you are currently feeling suicidal and can’t shake it please call:

• USA National Suicide and Crisis Hotlines
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
• Suicide Hotlines
  

Appreciate your comment. I bolded the paragraph to respond to this:
Apologizing to someone you have a grudge against who has hurt you is about letting go of your anger at them. It doesn’t mean giving a hurtful person a second chance to hurt you again. It also doesn’t mean doing this with a violent or abusive person, who you’d do best to steer clear of.
More on The Giving Life
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

You listen to the stock market reports as if rubber necking a car accident. And when you hear about that 150 point drop in the Dow, you’re not merely disappointed, you feel a kick in the stomach and get nauseated or light headed. Your boss reassures you that there will not be any more layoffs, but his voice seems tentative. Nauseated and light headed again. You’re speaking less and less to people around you. You’ve lost your sense of humor. Even if you’re a calm person, you have to struggle with your own road rage if someone cuts you off in traffic. Your drinking is up. And as far as dieting, exercising, taking care of yourself or having a healthy happy sex life? Forgeetaboutit.

What’s going on? You are continually being traumatized and re-traumatized, can’t get your footing and instead of becoming stronger, you’re becoming more anxious. And if the following hold true, there’s a good chance that you have Financial PTSD.

Re-experiencing the traumatic event

• Intrusive, upsetting memories of the event
• Flashbacks (acting or feeling like the event is happening again)
• Nightmares (either of the event or of other frightening things)
• Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma
• Intense physical reactions to reminders of the event (e.g. pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension, sweating)

PTSD symptoms of avoidance and emotional numbing

• Avoiding activities, places, thoughts, or feelings that remind you of the trauma
• Inability to remember important aspects of the trauma
• Loss of interest in activities and life in general
• Feeling detached from others and emotionally numb
• Sense of a limited future (you don’t expect to live a normal life span, get married, have a career)

PTSD symptoms of increased arousal

• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
• Irritability or outbursts of anger
• Difficulty concentrating
• Hypervigilance (on constant “red alert”)
• Feeling jumpy and easily startled

Other common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder

• Anger and irritability
• Guilt, shame, or self-blame
• Substance abuse
• Depression and hopelessness
• Suicidal thoughts and feelings
• Feeling alienated and alone
• Feelings of mistrust and betrayal
• Headaches, stomach problems, chest pain

What can you do? You can actually seek the same treatment that soldiers with PTSD or rape victims (and doesn’t a part of you feel raped by the economic events of the past couple years?) including support groups, seeking out a therapist or psychiatrist and checking out resources such as those at the bottom of this blog.

You also might do well to heed and follow the famed Serenity Prayer (so embedded in the fabric of 12 step programs): “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

Too inspirational for you? Need something more concrete?

Then how about:

1. Each day when you wake up say to yourself and write down the answer to: “What do I need to do today (or the next week), to make my company/department/organization a better company/department/organization and my marriage and family happier and my health healthier?”
2. Then “Just Schedule It.” Either for today or the next few days, because you haven’t made a commitment until you’ve scheduled it and you haven’t kept a commitment until you’ve checked it off after you have done it.

Resources:

• NIHM: PTSD
• About.com: PTSD
• Mayo Clinic: PTSD
• The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook
• The PTSD Workbook
• PTSD for Dummies

You haven’t fully let go of a grudge
until you have apologized to the person you’re feeling it toward.
Until you do, it will continue to eat away at you and make you sick
and unless you do, it will turn you into a bitter person
just like the parent you learned it from
and then you’ll make others sick when they’re around you.

A few years ago, I realized I had been holding a grudge against someone for twenty years.  I wasn’t aware of it except when I realized that this person and I had been very close friends until an upset happened, that in retrospect was a result of my taking something personally that wasn’t meant that way.  Shortly thereafter we moved away from each other because our jobs took us to different cities.  Following that I never stayed in touch with him, because I was harboring this long standing animosity.  When twenty years later I became aware of it, I felt guilty and ashamed.  I called my former friend and told him that I believed I owed him an apology for not being in contact with him (truth be told, he had not reached out to me either), because I had been holding a grudge against him that was completely unfounded.

Not being as neurotic as I and not having felt a grudge toward me, my friend responded: “Hey Mark, it’s great to hear from you.  I never thought anything came between us.  I just thought we moved away from each other and went about living our lives. Glad you called, what’s been happening to you after all these years?”

I hemmed and hawed and filled him in about my life and then he filled me in.  After we hung up, I felt better, but felt like an idiot.  I felt he hadn’t given it another thought, since he was not bothered by the kinds of hang ups that I have.  Then a few days later, he called me and said: “Hey Mark, where will you be this coming weekend?  Because if you’ll be at your home in Los Angeles, I would like to bring my wife and kids to meet your family.”  Which is what we did.  Apparently, my call had an impact.  I also realized that I hadn’t completely let go of my grudge until I called my friend to apologize.  He didn’t need to hear my apology, but I needed to hear me make it so that I could be freed from my negative feelings.

I think what holds us back from letting go of anger is that we don’t forgive as long as we need to blame.  And we need to blame as long as we are unable to admit and feel the hurt from being injured by someone else.  And we are unable to feel the hurt underneath, because doing so makes us feel vulnerable and fearful of a second attack that we are convinced would be too much to bear.

Apologizing to someone you have a grudge against who has hurt you is about letting go of your anger at them.  It doesn’t mean giving a hurtful person a second chance to hurt you again.  It also doesn’t mean doing this with a violent or abusive person, who you’d do best to steer clear of.

One of the best approaches I know to short circuit your emotions when you’re upset and before you become angry and start down the road of holding a grudge is to:

1. Say to yourself, “I’m reacting!”
2. Answer the question to yourself: “What am I feeling hurt or disappointed about right now?” (If you can’t get through the anger to the hurt or at least to the disappointment, it may be because the narcissistic part of your personality is too strong).
3. Answer the question to yourself: “What is my evidence that the other person meant to hurt or disappoint me? And might I be taking something personal that wasn’t meant that way? And if I am taking it personally and it is not meant that way, I need to let it go.”

Another approach to nip anger in the bud comes from one of my friends, Bob Pratt, President of Volunteers of America Los Angeles, is one of the least grudge holding and most even tempered people I know.  I asked him his secret.  He told me, “Whenever somebody does something hurtful to me, I assume innocence and that they are doing it, because someone has done something hurtful to them.  So, the person who acts with Road Rage to you is behaving that way, because something bad happened to them. My view is one should stop evil people when you encounter them, but there really are very few evil people in the world.  Everyone else is flawed including you and me.  And just as I would like people to cut me some slack because of my flaws, I have a policy of doing the same to them.”

I converted a Road Rager to a friend some years ago by virtue of the lesson that Bob has learned (i.e by having them see that my bad driving was because I was having a bad day).  I was having one of the most frustrating days of my life where it seemed that everything I did went wrong.  I was driving on Sepulveda Blvd. in Los Angeles as it enters into the San Fernando Valley in a place called Sherman Oaks.  I was so preoccupied that I cut off this older 6 foot 5 guy in his pick up truck, not once, but twice.  After the second time, he pulled in front of me and stopped and I was so dazed I just stopped when he did.  I could see that his wife was telling him not to go out to confront me.  He didn’t listen and stormed out of his truck to start a fight with me.  He came over beside my window and started swearing and yelling at me.  I was so out of it, I opened my driver side window to hear what he was saying.  He continued to make threatening gestures at me.

When he paused for a moment I said to him, “Have you ever had such an awful day where everything has blown up in your face, and that you just wish someone would come along and shoot you to put you out of your misery? Are you that person?”

He immediately changed and said, “What?”

I repeated, “Have you ever had such an awful day where everything has blown up in your face, and that you just wish someone would come along and shoot you to put you out of your misery? Are you that person?”

He then said in a calming voice, “Hey, it’s okay, calm down, it’s all going to be alright.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” I blurted back, “you haven’t had a day where everything you have done turned to crap.  Really, I’m not kidding.”

He then proceeded to try to calm me down and reassure me some more.  After a couple minutes he went back into his truck, and waved to me in the rear view mirror as if to say, “Now settle down, it’s going to be alright.”  And then he drove away and in a few moments I did the same.

Please share in the comments what you have discovered that has helped you to let go of a grudge (I assume that if you enjoy holding grudges, you will not have read this far).

8 Signs of a Jerk

1. Interrupts.
2. Doesn’t take turns.
3. Takes advantage of people who are down
4. Gloats in victory.
5. Is sullen in defeat.
6. Is not fair.
7. Lack integrity.
8. Is the kind of person you’ll avoid if you possibly can.

One of the reasons that most jerks get to you is that first they appall you, then they frustrate you, then they anger you and then they outrage you. And if you’re not comfortable with feeling outraged (as is true for most people), that is when they push you off balance and get the better of you.

Click on picture above to get printable PDF

Subscribe to Bottom Line Personal

8 Signs of a Jerk

1. Interrupts.
2. Doesn’t take turns.
3. Takes advantage of people who are down
4. Gloats in victory.
5. Is sullen in defeat.
6. Is not fair.
7. Lack integrity.
8. Is the kind of person you’ll avoid if you possibly can.

Click on picture above to get printable PDF

Subscribe to Bottom Line Personal

* Mental Real Estate – When you can name something that already has emotions attached to it in your customer’s or client’s mind, you own a piece of their “mental real estate” and have the beginning of traction (Familiarity + Emotion = Traction). When you twist or tweak or re-purpose that name in a certain way that surprises them, the Traction + Novelty deepens your connection to people’s emotions and in the end, their minds. For instance, the word “pirates” is kind of sexy in the minds of children, therefore “Pirates of the Caribbean” (and Disney) owns that mental real estate connected to “pirates” in children’s minds. Similarly, “jerk off” occupies some mental real estate in the minds of many adolescent and young adult men. So, voila, “Jerk Off Kit” may have caused many of you to open this when you normally wouldn’t have. On the other hand, because of that same embarrassment/shame laden mental real estate, it triggered a number of you to not open the email and furthermore to unsubscribe from my list. If that is the case, that’s too bad, because if you had opened it, you may have learned something that would be useful to you.

Hell hath no fury as a relationship between a narcissistic man and a borderline woman.

My colleagues and many of you would deem it inappropriate for me to imply that Mel Gibson and his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, or for that matter John and Elizabeth Edwards (as the book Game Change would have us believe) are dyed in the wool narcissistic and borderline personalities if I have not met and evaluated them (and then of course I wouldn’t tell you), but the title of this blog probably got your attention.

And I am not saying that either Gibson, his ex-girlfriend or John and Elizabeth Edwards do in fact have these personalities. But from what any of us read and hear in the media (which has its own opportunistic personality), we might view them in that light.

Perhaps a better view of this relationship made in hell that is in the public domain and was captured best in the iconic movie, “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

The rage however is triggered in different ways in each of these personality disorders. For the narcissistic male it is triggered when their partner refuses to feed into and psychologically conform to their grandiose, entitled core. For the borderline female the rage is triggered when their partner attempts to control or abandon them.

Another thing that both personalities have in common is that they are both primitive and immature. By that I mean that the measure of how evolved and mature you are is how deeply you can feel disappointed, angry, frustrated and/or hurt without striking out at the person doing it to you or to yourself in self-destructive behavior. In other words, the more you can feel and “take the hit” from life, without hitting back, the more grown up you are.

What is the takeaway from this for the Mel Gibson’s, Oksana Grigorieva’s, John and Elizabeth Edwards’ among you? Marriage is for grown ups not for children. And the good news? It’s never too late to grow up.

Addendum: One of my clinical focuses is “Recoupling Therapy” working with couples who are separated or living separately (as in one in a hotel and the other in the family home) who want to give their marriage one last chance before they call it quits. In fact, I won’t see couples who are not in that situation. That is because as long as you are still reactively, immaturely and hatefully living in the same house, that situation alone can bring out the narcissistic and borderline tendencies that lay within people who are not those personalities through and through. But when you have reached the point of sleeping in separate addresses, the possibility arises with that “time out” (which is what we do with immature acting out kids) of each person realizing that there is more to life and love than having to be right and get your way all the time.

Know any Narcissists?

The Neurotic Narcissist Continuum

Watch Mark’s CNN interview.

Wife: “Before I become a burden on my kids, I’m going to take a bottle of pills.”
Husband: “Too chancy, I’d go with a couple of guns.”
- husband and wife after caring for two parents with Alzheimer’s for three years

This is a response I am hearing from an increasing number of white middle class* baby boomers as they face the prospect of becoming old, enfeebled and a financial and emotional burden on their children.

It may also be that they are projecting the burden, drain and resentment they are feeling or have felt towards their own aging parents who have become enfeebled and require nearly round the clock care. And knowing how they have felt towards their own parents, they don’t want their children to carry the burden of taking care of them and feeling the same way towards them.

It may be prescient of them that knowing how impatient** they have been with their own parents and that their Millennial kids have no patience whatsoever, the idea that becoming mentally and physically enfeebled and dependent on these children portends an absolutely horrendous quality of life for both them and their children.

Is there a solution so that baby boomers might go “gently into that good night” instead of taxing their patience challenged adult children? Most likely what will happen is that when the middle class Millennials grow up and are in the position of having to take care of their elderly baby boomer parents, they will find a way (as their baby boomer parents have) to help pay for their care and delegate their caring to third world caretakers who still retain God’s gift of patience towards those in their care (which is why many a middle class baby boomer declares such caretakers “Godsends”).

One highly unlikely alternative is that Millennials will somehow develop patience to calmly follow the admonition of Cicely Saunders, founder of the hospice movement in caring for dying and infirm parents: “Don’t just do something, stand there.” Why so unlikely? Maybe it’s because their baby boomer parents who were the last generation to abandon patience in favor of the race to get more, sooner have been such effective role models.

In closing I am reminded of a quote from Dr. Milton Greenblatt from the 1970′s:

First we are children to our parents,
then parents to our children,
then parents to our parents,
then children to our children.

But then again that was in a galaxy far, far away and a time long, long ago when patience was not just a virtue… it was actually possible.

* This phenomenon may be more of an issue for the white middle class baby boomer, because family is everything for Third World people and the wealthy can and do pay for everything from people (often Third World) to raise their children to caretakers to provide care and loving caring to their aging and infirm parents.

** Another factor involved with the people I have heard these complaints from is the combination of Impatience + Difficult Parent (difficult as in “high maintenance, as in difficult to please, easy to upset).  It’s easy to be patient with parents who are “low maintenance” (easy to please, difficult to upset), generous and gracious even as they lose much of their physical and mental faculties. The takeaway from this is that what goes around, comes around and if you are the one who is “high maintenance,” you might want to change that.

And if this is not sobering enough read how Older Americans Greatest Fear is Outliving Their Money.

Also see: “How Could She Wish Death on the Mother She Loved?”

See Mark on CNN about Helping Vets with PTSD

I start with a disclaimer that what follows is empirically based on thirty years as a practicing psychiatrist and psychotherapist. It has been verified by formerly enlisted and senior officers from the Armed Forces, but has not been validated by any research or double blinded studies.

How does PTSD happen?

Central to nearly all the people I have treated or spoken with who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (in preparation of my book, “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for Dummies”) is the “fear of re-traumatization” and their efforts at any and all costs to avoid it often results in the symptoms they develop.

Soldiers enter basic training as “loosey goosey” enlistees whose minds and personalities are broken down and built back up into fighting machines devoted to fulfilling a mission and the well-being of their fellow soldiers. Imagine those recruits as a “green” rattling Ford pickup truck that can’t take a corner safely, being torn down and rebuilt into a turbo-charged Porsche that can handle any curve thrown at it and you get an idea of what the process is like.

Even Hollywood has jumped on this metaphor with the popular Transformer movies where rattling cars and trucks are broken down and reconfigured and rebuilt into monsters of good and evil. Get the idea?

After they finish basic training, it’s pretty heady, adrenaline driven stuff that can make soldiers feel nearly superhuman. Add to that the notion that they are going to fight evil and they can feel like a band of superheroes out to rid the world of villains.

But then they hit the reality of war face on or rather it hits them in the face. In the process they see horrors and create collateral damage no training can fully prepare you for. Imagine being ordered to run over a young child who will not get out of the way and you can’t swerve to avoid them because of the mine-laden side of the road and hearing the thump of their body as they hit the bottom of your Humvee. Or imagine following orders to take out a sniper nest in a house in a village and then entering it, only to discover a dog, a grandpa, a mother, and two children “shredded” or incinerated by you.

What happens to you when all your training for war runs head on into the debasement of humanity that you perpetrate in waging it?

The trauma cuts you to your core. The horrors that you see and the horrors that you caused won’t leave you alone. You don’t tell anyone else, because you think they’re handling it better than you and that you are just weak and missing the “right stuff” that your fellow soldiers have.

Although you never fully get over that trauma that rips you to the center of your being, as in human being, your training is good enough to enable you to get past it through the days and weeks and possibly even the tour of duty you are on. However the damage is done and the crack in the porcelain of what was once your soul remains.

You don’t let the world know about it and you do everything you can to not feel that fragility. But even though you don’t think about it, you believe that if you were re-traumatized that crack would cause you to shatter from the inside out and like Humpty Dumpty, all the king’s horses and all the king’s medics would never be able to put you back together again.

So you live your life avoiding anything that might re-traumatize you. You numb yourself with alcohol or drugs; you withdraw from family matters especially the yelling of your spouse and young children. Every now and then a car backfires or something catches you by surprise and you jump out of your skin, because you had temporarily relaxed your guard and that temporarily removed the paper thin veneer protective graft above your crack. It’s like someone pouring acid in an open cut, except this cut is in your mind.

If you are put in a situation in which you feel you will be re-traumatized, you can go into a state of near panic, in which you resort to your most basic “fight or flight” instincts.

Why does PTSD happen?

Have you ever passed a cut tree and seen all the exposed rings? Each of those rings represents a year in the life of that tree. Some of those rings may look thick and healthy indicating and good year; some may look very thin indicating a drought; some may look darkened indicating a forest fire that the tree survived; some may look nearly rotted indicating some fungal or insect infestation. In your minds eye you can also imagine that those years will have a lot to do with the eventual health of that tree and its overall resilience.

Trees are not the only living creatures that develop from the inside out. Imagine your brain as actually having three brains. Like the rings of a tree layered one upon the other, imagine your human (neomammalian) upper brain is layered upon your paleomammalian middle brain is layered upon your most primitive reptilian lower brain.

Now imagine figuratively that a recruit’s brain and “loosey gooseyness” is due to their three brains being loosely wired together. Then imagine that during basic training, those loose wires are stretched and even broken. But then those three brain are built up in to a tightly wired machine specialized for waging war.

When a highly trained, tightly wired and molded for war brain suddenly runs face to face into horrors perpetrated upon you and that you perpetrate on others, soldiers show that they are not Transformers, but rather, that they are too human an animal.

When does PTSD happen?

In the face of trauma, your three brains lose the way they are wired and coupled to each other. That feeling of being lost (especially when they return home without a mission, a squadron or an activity that creates and lives off the adrenaline they have become accustomed to during war) causes them to feel at a lost. Being used to being tightly coupled their brains will spontaneously recouple around a new mission. But this time the new mission is to avoid re-traumatization at all costs and that is the world in which someone with PTSD now lives.

Addendum: I did not serve in Vietnam, but two of my high school classmates are on the Vietnam War Memorial wall; my children did not serve in the current conflicts, but my friend Jane Bright’s son, Sgt. Evan Ashcraft and she started the Evan Ashcraft Foundation after he was killed.

I believe sacrificing oneself to protect others you have never met is the highest virtue in human beings. Our young men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan — as well as all the other veterans who have served in past wars — deserve much better than to fall between the cracks of all the organizations that try as they might are not doing the job and are falling further behind the challenge. Helping our young men and women successfully return to civilian life is the war after the war and if we do not do that better, it will in the end claim more lives than the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

To address the challenge of transitioning the military to civilian life I along with Lt. General Marty Steele (USMC retired) am organizing a group of “can do, will do, failure is not an option” decision makers from the military and government to meet as part of Big Task Weekend in Los Angeles that will take place September 30 – October 2, 2010. Big Task Weekend brings together top decision makers from a variety of companies, organization and NGO’s to learn the process of “collaborative action” by actually taking on and solving “big tasks” that affect national and corporate well being. This year’s big tasks will include: The Future of Education, The Future of Corporate Learning, America’s Health and Wellness, Health Care Reform, Financial Literacy, Military Transition to Civilian Life.

The measure of a civilization is how it treats those who have hurt it, and those who are hurting in it.

Terminally ill patient: I don’t think I’ve ever done anything important.

Me: What? You have a hospital names after you. You’ve created an industry and thousands of jobs.

Patient: I have all the admiration, love and respect that money can buy and that’s all it’s worth. I’m not really close to anyone… not my wife, not my ex’s, not my children from three marriages and not my friends. I always played it close to the chest and never let anyone in and now I’m paying the price. Maybe, just maybe, I out-smarted myself.

Getting to know people like the patient above can teach you a lot about life and what a good life means. Granted there are many people unlike my patient above who are able to feel fulfilled by great accomplishments that benefited others even if it was at the cost of feeling close to anyone. However there are many who like my patient feel a sense of emptiness even after a life of great accomplishment.

Something that I have noticed in a number of those in the second category suffer from what I call the “Syndrome of Disavowed Yearning.” Read the rest of this entry »

Where are you?

The measure of true independence
is how self-reliant, resourceful and coachable you are.

I work with many successful CEO’s, executives, senior managers to become even more successful. Something they have in common and in spades are self-reliance, resourcefulness and coachability. Read the rest of this entry »