identity

Your Selfies Make Me Hate You

Published on August 29, 2018February 20, 2019 by Scott Williams2 Comments

I do this regular gig in concert with Dawn Taylor. This week again we were hard at the conversation and she mentioned that it is common for high schoolers in her world to take hundreds of selfies every day. Every day. If you are one of those who is prone to the lens, with pouting lips and that one leg in front of the other to prop up your boobs and make you look thinner, you may have issues. That’s right, I’m talking about you Steve. We all know you are beautiful and you don’t need to point it out. You have it going on, baby, you’re perfect just the way you are. Shine girl.

I have a couple of friends who post selfies about stages of their life, or every once in while when they feel like it. I’m not talking to you. Hundreds. Fake accounts to try out 350 selfies, a panacea of self-indulgent spam all designed to see which pouty face plays best with a test audience.

Psychology geeks tend to look at life through a particular lens, and if you ask for my professional opinion the selfie thing is far more telling than the average low-grade narcissist may realize. There definitely, absolutely positively is an insane relationship between people who constantly take selfies and words like narcissism and insecurity and trauma. Your incessant need to show other people how you look and love and live (gag) throws up huge red flags to the people around you who are, and I say this lovingly, sick of you posting selfies all the time in your unreal world of stunted happiness.

I’m coming on a little strong because we promised we would, and so the question for all of us is, in light of our addictions to our phones and our media, how self-absorbed do we want to become? Once the sex robots are sold on Amazon it’s going to be difficult to get anyone to listen for a decade, so we need to figure this out now. Our virtual existence allows us increasingly to confirm those neurotransmitters that are in the process of hardwiring humanities next phase of existence. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (who incidentally wouldn’t know a thing about this topic so why do you care about their opinion) to know that we are blindly marching into the i-Store, blissfully yet unaware of the effects of such catastrophic technological and cultural changes on our perceptions of reality, and that’s not even mentioning the effect of lassoing our wills to our technology (and that phone I panic over when I forget it at a restaurant).

If you are having a crippling struggle with insecurity please talk to someone. If you are feeling a little bit narcissisty it is important for you and the people you love to have an accurate barometer for your behaviour. Recognize you have a problem and deal with it. The real reason that many people do not move beyond their defining dysfunction is because it’s damn hard and takes years. Most people don’t change because it’s too much work with little interim reward. We’re all insecure but if it is affecting your life to such a degree that you need validation from anonymous stranger-friends in the virtual world than recognize you have an issue and do something about it. You’re better than that, at least for now, and you don’t need 120 pictures of your blowfish lips to prove it. Let’s just say it – you’re definitely getting uglier the older you get, so lets all just deal with it and agree to keep lying to each other until it doesn’t matter anymore.

Which brings us to the point of this rant – it is my absolute belief that the secret of life (for me) is caring less what people who don’t matter think about me. I’ve had people who alleged they were my friends say atrocious things to my face and behind my back, and Counsellor Scott has worked this through and screw you. I’m good. I remember the first time someone slammed me hard on the internet, before I understood about trolls. It hurt my feelings. I’m a Canadian so I was looking for something much more passive-aggressive. My goal is to care less, not more, about the opinions of people who did not have my best interests at heart.

I’m fairly certain that someday that negative stuff sets in for good. Old people that complain all the time and middle-aged folks who are angry at the government and can find fault in any kind of happiness. Older adults that are still cripplingly anxious, talking about drivel that is mind-numbingly boring. Just kill me. Then again, some of us have grown up as entitled little prima donnas and honestly believe we are inherently better than other people. That stuff infects your soul. The beautiful people have other problems that I mostly don’t care about. You’re privileged, deal with it. Next.

Trauma is also on that list, to the surprise of some. People who are vapidly self-absorbed, who contort their body for 100 pictures at a time, have occasionally been through situations and realities that have scarred them and left them feeling hungry for approval and ultimately love. Terrible experiences can scar you in the most unusual ways. Maybe you were beaten or raped or violated in one of a hundred sick scenarios, anytime from a couple of months before you were born until you graduated from pre-school. Maybe your time came later. Broken hearts and bruised cheeks and someone telling you that you will always be a loser. The older I get the more ways I learn how we can hurt. Sleep issues, mood swings, panic attacks, problems with sustaining relationships of any kind, hyper-vigilence, difficulty with change or addiction to it, even attraction to the bad boy/girl can be an aftershock of getting the shit kicked out of you by your ex or hanging out with that creepy uncle. Some survivors have difficulty sticking with romantic relationships and are control freaks and obsess about how clean the kitchen counter is.

Reason #293 why psychology is cool.

Ask yourself, how often do I look at my body or obsess about a flaw or a judgment from someone whose opinion shouldn’t matter? How important are your looks, really really? I’m sorry I had to be the one to break it to you but no one cares this much about what your truck looks like when it’s dirty, it’s a truck. I’ve never dreamed about your truck. Stop posting pictures of the truck. Now you’ve done it, you have me in a loop. Truck.

No one cares if you are shopping. No one wants to see 24 pictures of you getting your stupid hair done. Give us one good picture of you and your bestie in front of the Great Wall of China and don’t stand in the way of the wall. You can post pictures from The Louvre or your skydiving adventure all day, but I can only absorb a limited number of pictures of you on a beach in the Caribbean before I begin to wish you ill will. One is nice, 50 pictures of you having fun makes me think you are rubbing my nose in it. And last, but certainly most gross, a few of you need to know that you’re making some of your friends horny and none of us wants to have to bring up that topic without tequila. Stop making us horny.

This is what I’m trying to learn – who cares what people think about me. If you are one of my chosen people than every concern you have is a valid one, but if I’m rarely or ever going to see that person again who the hell cares if they approve of me or not. You can’t be trolled on social media if you refuse to care about what anonymous idiots think of you or your work. Internet comments cannot hurt you unless you let them. I need to grow wise and kind and all that crap, I get it, but who really cares what a stranger thinks about me? Why oh why would I give a flying flip what some anonymous detractor or false friend thinks about my life or my behaviour? I have high quality friends who take delight in taking me down a peg, so why would I care what that person said about me on Facebook or to a friend of a friend of a friend of mine?

So think about this need to self-obsess. Some of us are spending way too much time getting our self esteem from our meat sack. Many of us are completely obsessed with our feelings and our hurts and our massive insecurities. I say this with no judgment, go get some help before its too late and you become that ugly version of yourself and die bitter.

My Dog Has Generalized Anxiety Disorder. And He’s A Racist.

Published on January 18, 2016February 20, 2019 by Scott Williams6 Comments

My dog has Generalized Anxiety Disorder. This is my day job and I have watched literally hundreds of human clients who have struggled with GAD so I feel qualified to diagnose my dog. Human persons with mental health issues are diagnosed primarily on symptomatology; you tell the doctor what is wrong with you and he sends you to a psychiatrist who will, after talking with you for a part of an hour or two, tell you what is wrong with your head. Don’t get me started on misdiagnosis. Continue reading “My Dog Has Generalized Anxiety Disorder. And He’s A Racist.” →

Go To Sleep

Published on January 9, 2016March 1, 2016 by Scott Williams14 Comments

I have three grandchildren. Young kids marrying young kids, marrying young kids. Now that they have spawned, I regularly tell my children they are redundant, sperm donors who no longer serve any other familial purpose. I am a counselor so I’m used to being honest with people for money.

Isaac is two-years-old and a force of nature. He is the one in the beer hat, although we would never do that and I get one first. Isaac and I are joined at the hip and he is definitely my little man. Continue reading “Go To Sleep” →

Stupid Little Pill

Published on October 6, 2015March 1, 2016 by Scott Williams5 Comments

In a recent conversation with a friend I accidentally referred to anxiety medication as “aspirin for the brain”. I meant it in a good way. Why is taking something for anxiety any different than taking the exact same thing for insomnia?

There is much stigma around medications and it is tempting to believe any number of ridiculous cognitive distortions we all battle, from time to time. As simple as it sounds, people generally push back when a professional prescribes a stupid little pill to cope with the uncopeable. We have been told that people with depression are emotionally weak and need to “snap out of it”. Anxious people seem skittish by nature and those panic attacks might just be a personality flaw. Taking medication for depression or anxiety or (insert name of mental health issue here) means that I have somehow failed or given in or given up. I shouldn’t need to see a counsellor to take an SSRI or go on disability. People who take meds because they cry allot are weaklings. Continue reading “Stupid Little Pill” →

Chaos Addiction

Published on August 20, 2015 by Scott WilliamsLeave a comment

It dawned on my today, my life is like a sitcom. My day job is beyond chaotic, just the way I like it. Today alone I met with several agencies of law enforcement, spoke about naloxone and the growing Fentanyl issue with a group of colleagues, handed out harm-reduction supplies at one of the local tent villages, visited an ice cream social, sat in the sun, talked to a kid, laughed loud, and talked through intimate life details with people all day. After years of clinical counselling I have become an outreach worker, one more time. For some reason, this time it feels better, I’m enjoying the ride more, just trying to catch the waves.

I grew up on the prairies. Apparently my parents sinned in a past life and I didn’t move to the Left Coast of Canada until my thirties. I had no idea how different the weather was. Somehow I had imagined it would feel like the rest of Canada. It feels closer to San Francisco than Moose Jaw.

Oh, and there’s an ocean here. When you live on the prairies the ocean is something you see when you do your twice in a lifetime trip to Hawaii or Cancun. Some rich people I knew had the opportunity to see the ocean every year. I have always been a water baby and dream of retiring on a lake or river. The Nahanni, the Churchill, the Hood, Otter Rapids and warm lakes.

The ocean was different, spiritual. The energy scares me, invites and touches me, in ways that Trout Rapids never could. If you have ever been on the waves there is a feeling of zen, of presence. This mass lies beyond comprehension, powerful and apathetic and filled with things that want to bite my leg off. After the first panic attack, slowly at first and with growing realization, the ocean’s “aliveness” infects your presence. I have felt that same oneness during a 22 kilometre set of class-two rapids on the Clearwater River, in a cave while spelunking in Colorado, and on a solo water ski behind Rod’s boat. Connection. Go surfing one time and you will understand why people refer to this place as “Mother Earth”.

Somehow lost my connection with the earth. I drive, every day, past scenery which invites untold thousands to Canada with an apathy approaching the comatose. I can see Mount Baker from my house, if I care to look. I am a few hundred yards from the mighty Fraser River. It’s been spring here since January or February and I could usually care less. Turn on the air conditioning, it’s hot out there.

There is a sense of disconnection.

Chaos is intoxicating, though in a way more reminiscent of a drunken brawl than a glass of Pinot Noir. The pace and electronics of life are overwhelming, consuming. I may be able to escape the heat with the help of a little electricity and a Canadian Tire pool, but it is that same conductivity which has invaded my existence with constant noise and literally rewired me neurologically. That time before we all had cell phones, electronic toys, and the insipid drone of the global village, are long gone so we may as well put a fork in it. Pretending that things will somehow miraculously go back to when you were 104 pounds only leads to heartache and insecurity and a one-way ticket to Bittertown.

Complain all we wish, some of us are going to have to figure out how to remain zen in this insane place. It may be time to stop wishing for your ship to come in and wade out a bit to find it. Most of us aren’t going to win the lottery or run for president and will probably end up dying a slow emotional death if we don’t find out how to reach even a modicum of contentment in the here and now, and not just in the sweet bye and bye.

This summer I’m swinging a lot. It’s starting to look creepy when a dude my age spins in circles and tries to make the seat go all the way around, on the swing set next to your terrified 6 year-old. I no longer care.

Winter is coming, you have time for one last swim.

Batman Killed By Camry

Published on August 18, 2015May 13, 2017 by Scott Williams3 Comments

Sad story on the Interweb today about the death of Batman. Leonard Robinson was a successful business man who, with no ulterior motive, spend a great deal of his cash impersonating Batman. He drove a Lamborghini, completely decked out in paraphernalia. He was pulled over by the cops in 2012, who must have obviously not understood that the Dark Knight was visiting kids parties and generally shedding joy throughout Gotham. I first read about him on Cracked.com. Lenny spent his money trying to make a small difference and would have remained in obscurity, just doing good things, if not for a viral video taken from a police dash-mounted camera.

Here’s the biography from Cracked:

Take Lenny B. Robinson, the Baltimore businessman who has poured more money than some of us make in a year into a full Batman costume and other gear to go entertain sick kids. He even bought a black Lamborghini and decked it out with bat symbols (though we suspect he would have done that anyway).

Via Washington Post
“In fact, doing that was the only reason I got rich in the first place.”

He spends about $25,000 a year on this little crusade, buying toys and gifts to give out to kids suffering from leukemia and equally awful diseases. Yes, he’s rich and he can do this kind of thing, but it’s still nice to see an example of a rich guy giving back when you hear so much about pro athletes and such blowing their fortunes on bullshit.

People like Leonard remind us that there are still people out there who care and share and give and love without any consideration of a financial windfall or of ending up on America’s Got Talent. I don’t know the full backstory and he may be as crazy as a bag of hammers but I doubt it. Good people make me want to be good people. And drive a Lamborghini.

I always wanted to be a superhero, many of us did. Life has a way of stripping our idealism and our special abilities and it’s very easy to forget that there was a time when we wanted to change the world. Here’s to you Batman. I always thought it would be a superhero who eventually figured out that you had no real superpowers but it was a Toyota. You were the hero we wanted, but not the one we deserved.

Change The World

Published on July 28, 2015July 28, 2015 by Scott Williams7 Comments

“The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs,” he said. “If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

Edward Snowden changed the world, and like most revolutionaries, the machine is trying to kill him. Believe what you want about Mr. Ed, his revelation was a game-changer. I’m on holidays (because we sometimes call it that in Canada) and right now I’m looking at the lake and watching Terminal F. This is a documentary about the events around the events of Snowden’s recent life. As far as documentaries go, it’s less biased than the mainstream, and less sympathetic than my virtual friends who live in the world of anonymity would appreciate. I study subjects like cultural engineering and the other side of the web and cybersecurity for the same reason I look at most things – everything is so incredibly interesting.

One day nerds will look back on 2013 and have conferences about how the world changed that spring. They will talk about the world of 9/11 and the cultural precursors to what went on; the decline of the nuclear family, the end of religion as a cultural force, the wars and the unrest and Anonymous and the growth and power of the virtual insurgency. After literally the entire history of humanity a fifteen-year-old kid from Nairobi suddenly has a voice and a forum and potentially a gun, if she learns how to use Bitcoin. And everytime she turns on her computer or texts a friend that information is recorded by people who may not have her best interests and freedoms at heart. What are you willing to give up to live in a safe world? Are you willing to give up your freedom? These are very important and complex questions.

No one knows how this is going to shake out, but several intelligent people are fairly adamant that Snowden may have just stopped 1984. It’s entirely possible that a 29-year-old computer geek singlehandedly changed the course of human history and stopped A Brave New World. It’s every cheesy youth dystopian movie you watched in 2014. Phrases like “surveillance state” started popping up on YouTube and on Frontline. The journalists who broke the story did not work for The National Enquirer, they worked at The Guardian, a real voice that wins Pulitzers.

Edward Snowden may just be the most valuable person in the world.

Snowden smells more like a brilliant Gavrilo Princip than a rich politician. He is normal, not beautiful, maybe even an idealist. Like Gavrilo he may have changed the course of human history forever, this time with a few SD cards instead of a gun or sword or bow. Many of us are convinced that there were some very disturbing things going on in cyberspace, and I’m not talking about buying cocaine at Silk Road. We are finding out that people were watching, developing programs and advertising and spyware and it was beginning to look like those conspiracy freaks weren’t as off as we all assumed they were. With Stephen Hawking now prophesying the invasion of our robot overlords, things just got freaking weird. Terminator weird.

Not everyone thinks Edward Snowden is a messiah, however. Many people who wear blue suits and red ties believe he has put us all at risk. It is a scary world, and anyone who has ever stumbled on the Deep Web can attest that there are evil and vindictive people out there, and many of them have a platform. The internet is a potential nightmare and someone needs to stand up for what has been right for so very long. You won’t be a raging liberal after someone rapes your wife in the name of some cause they joined online. Stop screwing around. Spooks in Washington and Ottawa and redneck politicians want this man dead because he has shown all their cards to the bad people and that is bad enough; but now the Proles are waking up. It’s all bizarre and apocalyptic and even the American government freely admits that Snowden’s documents were completely legit. Strange.

Edward Snowden was subcontracted to the NSA, arguably one of the most sophisticated surveillance and intelligence networks in the world. Such agencies have, probably by their own admission, arisen as a necessary evil to combat very dark forces that will, not in theory, hurt people you love for money or power or a radical cause. This does not seem debatable and has been going on since life was mould. One little nerd brought the surveillance state and many gigantic companies to their knees and changed the world forever, for good or evil, depending on which couch you are sitting in. If you are not up to speed on this issue you owe it to yourself to become educated. This is very important stuff.

This young man is now hiding in Russia, which plays beautifully into the political narrative wherein ES has put American interests at risk and he’s working for the enemy, on purpose or not. Regardless of who is right his name will be in history books, hundreds of years from now. How weird is it if you feel just a little bit jealous?

We all want to be significant and that is not a bad thing. In counseling we talk about this all the time, the systematic devastation and crushing anonymity of this culture and it’s toll on every one of us. Many spend their entire lives looking for something that sticks out, only to die with a yearning sense of almost. I will probably never have the opportunity to engage a planet and chances are you may not either. So now to find out what is left.

We are tempted to lie to ourselves and thereby diminish our hopes; with internal conversations about how unrealistic our champagne wishes were anyway. Every time I give up a dream or lose a little more hope for a meaningful life a little piece of my idealism dies.

I know so many bitter older people. I get that. Gone are the pretty parties and the unquenchable adrenaline. Welcome prostate exams and vaginal dryness. Watching your life slip away while still trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up really sucks. How many times have you wished for another kick at the can because next time you would somehow know all the lessons it has taken us a lifetime to accumulate? The truth is you will not get another kick at any can and I don’t know about you but I do not want to look back at my life and realize I wasted my one chance.

Call it a rationalization if you want but it is important to realize that you do not have to make the cover of Rolling Stone to live a life that matters. You may never be in a history book but you could write your story any time you wish. While you may never be rich and famous, you could invest in a broken life and bring hope to dozens of people if you wanted to. We all choose to succumb to hopelessness, and if you decide you don’t want to be around that is entirely your choice. If you don’t want to step out on the ice quite yet it’s not too late to turn the ship around. Bitterness is a choice. Choosing to be critical of everyone who doesn’t ascribe to your very particular criteria is a choice. Pettiness and negativity and continually talking about your damn sore elbow that no one really cares about is a choice. Fixating on your problems for fifty years is entirely a choice. The desire to one day wake up with a smile and a new dream is also a choice. So is getting up one more time when you struggle to find meaning right now. So is saying no to our raging self-indulgence.

I’m looking around the table and it doesn’t take a neuroscientist to realize that people tend to end up in one of two camps; the old and beautiful and the old and bitchy. There are a million reasons to end up a smoldering hot pocket but at the end of the day no one is going to give a crap why you are still angry about that guy who ruined you fifty years ago. Please don’t think I am diminishing the incessant grind of stress and hurt and disappointment. What I am suggesting is that it is up to me how this plays out.

I will never be Edward Snowden because every one of us is dealt a different hand and mine doesn’t look like it’s going to end up with a Gucci watch. Ed may wind up in a prison cell, this world loves to crucify its prophets. I for one am grateful that he had the courage to do what was right, and the cojones to pull it off. Many people disagree with me and I for one am glad that you have the freedom to tell me off all you want. I have the freedom to not give a damn.

At the end of the day I desperately do not want to become a petty and whiny old man who spends his life complaining about how the kids of today aren’t like when I was a kid. Someone put me out of my misery first. Please. This life is screaming by, and we are all going to be dust before too long; so for the love of God don’t give up.

Someday’s Coming

Published on July 25, 2015July 26, 2015 by Scott Williams10 Comments

Someday.

I remember a moment captured in time. I was making breakfast at my restaurant, The Bad Dog Grill, and I realized I hated my life. It was 7:30 am and I wanted a beer. If I cut my hand one more time, maybe I can go home today. I just knew I would never get out of that kitchen. Then one day I was.

I have spoken with people in prison, or doing time in a bad relationship, who have been convinced I was wrong. This hell is never going to end. I will never meet someone who loves me. I will never want to live again. I can never move on from this. Then you do, though rarely like on television. We sincerely need to have a conversation some time about what recovery really looks like. God never sent me a thunderbolt and one day I didn’t wake up fixed. It’s gradual and tedious and most of us have no flipping clue what “better” really should look like.

Many of us grow up believing that we are supposed to move beyond, not just move on. Somehow we are supposed to forgive that monster or forget about that loss or magically get normal. Those are wonderful motivational posters but in the real world we usually become scarred by life and I’m not just talking about table saws and missing fingers. Life beats the hell out of many of us and it is going to take a religious event or a Canadian Tire pool full of good tequila for things to feel spanky. It is tempting to pine for the innocence or the waistline or the eyebrows of our youth but, and I hate being the one to tell people this, that ship has sailed, been attacked by Somali pirates and sunk by the North Korean military. You are never going to be who you once were and when you think about it, that may be a very good thing. I know you used to be able to run for miles and jump over fences and turn everyone’s eye but chances are you were way way dumber. Do you really want to be 18 and perky again? Willing to give up all that experience and drink the Koolaid?

When I was younger I was convinced I knew the score, and I was an idiot. Sorry to get all technical on you there. I could not give up what I know now for who I was then. That is difficult to write but it rings true for me.

Someday. Someday things will be different than they are today. Before the steam engine you could be attacked by the Huns in one millenia than the Mongols in another and the tactics would be similar because both armies used horses and bows and arrows. The world was defined for centuries by a single warrior, usually on a mount. The players may have changed but the world hadn’t. Time barely moved. The vast majority of the planet never travelled beyond their district. There was no Wifi. When the Mongols used gunpowder against the Hungarians no one even understood what that sound was, and why is there a hole in me? Generations passed with little noticeable difference.

This is not that time. I cannot promise you much, but it does appear self-evident that this culture is addicted to unstoppable momentum. A woman in a bad marriage is far more apt to leave than she was four hundred years ago. Heck, forty years ago.

It may not get good but it probably won’t stay the same. Fewer of us are willing to put up with monotonous misery anymore. There is no possible way soldiers would sit in trenches today, like they did in World War One, unless there was an Xbox and free Facebook. Two months of sitting in water and rats and dysentery and I don’t know about you but I’d probably go over the hill and let them shoot me, just out of boredom and from the constant itching. I hate itching. It may be possible that we are not the strongest generation that ever lived. Those old 90-year-olds killed people and it still would not serve to piss too many of them off, especially on a cruise when they race their walkers and gave me the evil eye. My grandfather left his family for over four years to drive a gas truck to the Front. Did he even have air conditioning? The times, they are a’changing.

Someday’s coming, for all of us. To quote Mr. Smith, “that is the sound of inevitability”. Your depression may not be terminal and that kid may talk to you again, someday. Someday you will know things that you don’t right now and your situation will change just enough that you will look at life differently. What often looks like “things finally going your way” may have at least something to do with how much you change, and that is the best news I can tell you. Sure you are going through hell, but if you are keeping your head just above the waves you are undoubtedly learning important lessons that you would never understand without going through this Armageddon. You are reading a blog by a therapist, so you are probably wise enough to know you aren’t wise enough yet to handle the whole enchilada. Me too. I desperately hope I am not a finished product.

Overcoming your stuff has more to do with just getting in the ring, than it has to do with winning every round. I can’t tell you how many times I fail at almost everything, and my job is to keep getting up in the morning and giving a damn. That’s me, it may not be you. For people with ADHD just keeping your act together is often hard enough without all the gushy little rewards. The empaths suffer so very much, just being alive. Being the strong one sucks. The person who carries the weight of the world is often crushed. Most of us would self-medicate if we could get away with it, Scot(t)-free. We haven’t even discussed one of my favorite themes – the real world is often boring and relentless and stressful. Stir in a few mental health issues, and a loss or two, and you may be tempted to just give up.

Don’t do it. Someday’s coming. It may be years or it could be today (probably not) but change happens whether we like it or not. This is the one constant in the Twenty-first Century. If you are awake you may have noticed the global village is experiencing the most profound cultural revolution since the Enlightenment. The internet, combined with catastrophic cultural changes, has transformed the world forever. There is no way to put the rabbit back in the hat.

I am not going to launch into a diatribe on how we are all headed to hell in a handbasket. There is plenty of time for that. Lately I’ve wondered if there is not a pot of gold in this electronic GMO rainbow. I can remember, even in my lifetime, when you had to go to a library if you wanted to read about anything. The world was slower and if you are depressed or dealing with impossible situations, slow never feels good.

Hold on. Someday’s still coming. I just wish, sometimes, it would hurry the hell up.

All kids need is a little help, a little hope and someone who believes in them.
Magic Johnson

Check Up From The Neck Up

Published on July 23, 2015March 1, 2016 by Scott Williams4 Comments

I’m going on vacation today. Right now that seems so far away, in the distant haze of a much later today; but by the time you read this I will be zen.

My wife keeps booking me appointments at the dentist. Like, every year. When I was single I could go forever without going to the dentist but of course I would never admit that in a forum such as this. Apparently people go to the doctor, for no apparent reason, just to check in or check up or whatever it’s called. I go to the doctor when I need something fixed, gouged, or medicated. I happen to break allot so why would I go again just to have him take my blood pressure? They don’t even give out candy at my age. My wife seems to think this will keep me alive longer so I asked her, “what makes you think I want to live longer?” So controlling. Continue reading “Check Up From The Neck Up” →

Freaks

Published on July 10, 2015July 10, 2015 by Scott Williams10 Comments

From my office window I can just read the bumper sticker on the back of one of my colleagues cars. It is a quote from Laurel Thatcher Ullrich, “well-behaved women seldom make history”. There may be wisdom on that Honda. History is replete with this magical tale – the misunderstood hero who, against all odds, finds true love/kills the dragon/beats the English/champions a lost cause/stands up against oppression, etc. etc. etc.

People who had never heard of Enigma or advanced mathematics now love Alan Turing because of The Imitation Game and it’s sympathetic re-creation of a maltreated genius with bonus Asperger’s diagnosis. Who among us cannot weep with the downtrodden, the marginalized and the underrated; especially if they happen to be as pretty as Benedict Cumberbatch? Everyone loves a Cinderella ending, or a sad clown, or a misunderstood genius.

David and Goliath. How To Train Your Dragon 1 and 2. Brave. Frozen. The Santa Clause. Robin Hood. Zombieland. Die Hard. The Graveyard Book. Terminator. The Princess Bride. Dracula. This Is The End. Every Tom Hanks movie except the stupid one where he played a gangster. Stop me. Such narratives are played and replayed over millennia because this is the human story, or at least the antiseptic and idealized version. Against impossible odds our everyperson throws off her library glasses, grabs an AK-47 and wastes the terrorists. A little girl finds the ruby slippers and, aided by an unlikely band of friends and against all odds, defeats the flying monkeys and finds her way home to Kansas. Gag.

In the real world people often get ahead and win the hand of the prince or princess by doing things for themselves; and usually in an office, not on a battlefield. The modern First World is virtually devoid of actual adventure and we are forced to live out our violent and voyeur fantasies in video games and at the Cineplex. If you stop to consider the fact that for thousands of years young males were off hacking limbs by the time they were in puberty; this can cause one to question the efficacy of constricting these evolutionary primates (I mean teenage males, sorry) to a classroom with a desk that you can throw, a buzzillion volts of testosterone running through their veins. I’m not a sociologist but I’m just saying.

We were raised as children to experiment with our individuality, only to grow up into a civilization which does not value non-conformity. Some of those arrogant rock anthems by rich babies bemoaning having a real job may be right. Many of us, especially once you’ve ripened a bit, wake up one day only to realize that we have not been happy in years, and are sick and tired of uncomfortable shoes and an ugly spouse. The real world’s default setting is “boring”. Fitting in is tedious and mind-numbing and soul-destroying. There is no balloon ride back home and it is interesting that in the classic Wizard of Oz her real life was monochrome and her fairytale was alive with colour. It is possible to live in incredible splendor and still be as predictable as Cream of Wheat, way down inside. Drab. Beige. Get in line. Pay that bill. Cut that lawn. Wash, rinse, repeat. By the time we hit forty most of us feel done.

We lie to kids, though innocently enough. This world does not honour its innovators, it usually rejects them until they are dead or in computers. In what I like to call the real world we were taught that to be different was wrong. You might be cool in elementary school or at the bar, but chances are you won’t make the oval office. Artists and weirdos and hippies, oh my.

Many of us found a few others in the wilderness; though often people who are outliers live a life of abject loneliness. Organizations are notorious for marginalizing the weird. In the real world the freaks rarely get to command a Mad Max Army of Liberation and Enlightenment and there is no way in hell Kirk would really get to fly the mothership unless his last name was Bush or Trudeau.

It is at this point in the narrative when we can seamlessly slip into a rant about the unappreciated genius that we all know your mom thought you were. Not this time. This is about life, not a bumper sticker or cutesy poster that you read on Facebook about believing in yourself. In reality the flying monkeys would have killed Dorothy and eaten Toto on a fire made from scarecrow using a tin pan.

Some people are just different and will probably never hire Sherlock to play them in a massive biopic. The vast majority of us had better Saran Wrap our corpse if we want anyone to remember us after we are gone. For every Justin Bieber there are a million, far more talented and intelligent artists, who will never make the cover of The Enquirer. It is no surprise to most of us, then, that millions, even billions, struggle to find meaning and value in a world of five thousand virtual friends and no one to call when you are freaking out.

We have talked about learning to play a little nicer, and we have discussed what it feels like to live with a marginal personality, but here and now I want to remind us all that every single person I know is unique and strange and broken and weird and worried and vulnerable. Some of us have a harder time than others, but no one gets out alive. You’re all weird. Welcome aboard.

By way of illustration, consider the average adult with undiagnosed ADHD. There are millions of them. People with ADHD often have difficulty looking like the rest of the citizenry. Some are prone to act in ways which are not considered normal, whatever the heck that is. Many struggle to concentrate or turn off the noise. Many, many of us struggle to turn off the noise. If you live with depression or anxiety, if your financial partner left you poor or broken, if you get handed a disease or a mental health issue, you are pretty much normal.

Imagine that, you might be normal. Most of those we deem marginal in personality have obvious and persistent character traits which piss society off; but some of us are trying to cope and cannot help it. It has taken most of my adult life to become comfortable in my own skin. The instant I write that line I begin to backpaddle in my head. My cognitive distortions are home for a visit. I can’t say that. That is rarely true. It sounds arrogant. I am so flawed. Blaah blaah blaah. I bore myself.

There are so many buts connected to that ridiculous statement. How can I become whole if I do not even allow myself the opportunity to believe it can happen? Can we ever celebrate a good day or a good week or a win? Go ahead, brag a little. It’s perfectly healthy. In the right place and with the right friend you should be able to crow away about the good things, the small victories, and the battle scars. We have been poisoned to believe that any form of self-promotion is arrogance. Total crap.

It’s easy to notice the freaks. We say that, “there is one in every crowd” or “one in every family”. If you don’t have an emotional black sheep in your clan then, as the cliché says, it’s probably you. How simple it is to marginalize those whose behaviour would not fall within what eggheads call normative. Wikipedia describes this as “normal or correct way of doing something”. You may not be normative, whatever that means.

We have things we cannot change. Try as you might, you may always be a bit of a pessimist. I know, I know, you’re a realist, I just have a cold. Trauma may have taken things that nothing can bring back. Illness can do this as well. If we are completely honest, some of us have personalities which are constantly a work in progress. We get mad too quickly and often, or are hurt far too easily, or talk too much or too little, according to someone with an opinion. There are those who have difficulty assimilating into a culture they don’t seem to understand or thrive in. If that last statement made you think of the Borg, then you may just be a nerd. Some of us are just a little strange. Let’s be ok with that, just for a moment.

You may have read my recent article entitled, This Is How I Was Made. I was cognizant, when I wrote it, that some will think it should be amended to read, “This is What Is Left After Life Kicks You In The Figurative Cojones”. Much of what we are, what we have become, has been influenced by the bucket list of experiences you have under the hood. You may look like your dad but you act like your life, that old nature/nurture dealio. Part of the reason you are always mad may be a coping mechanism to deal with an existence rife with insecurity and disappointment. People become control freaks for a reason. Perhaps you have difficulty committing to relationships, or you check out emotionally or you cry at the drop of a hat. The question is, why?

The porridge that you know as Scott is a complex and highly biased combination of amino acids, a military upbringing, education, hurt, experiences, Dr. Pepper, and mechanisms for coping with a life without a parachute. I have written of this often; our childhood may shape us, but it does not provide us with the necessary tools to emotionally and intellectually navigate our dysfunctional world. It is not unlikely that several of your most prolific coping mechanisms may no longer add value to your life. One day you wake up with twenty extra pounds and no freaking idea how to have a happy or contented life, myself included.

There is no instruction sheet for living with rape or OCD or a parent that raised you in a purple haze of good weed and bad life choices. A passive-aggressive influence, a narcissist, a predator, they all leave their scars. Neglect or poverty or a mom that freaked out at every single thing and raised her children as a fashion accessory can all lead to dysfunctional coping mechanisms and a screwed up understanding of reality and maturity. So can any bad parent. The list of potential detours for which you have no prior skill set is virtually endless.

So maybe you could cut yourself some slack. While you are doing that, try to remember that every one of us is having a bad day, once in a while.

It’s really hard to make peace with who I really am. If you are still reading you may understand by now why this piece would inevitably land here. This wasn’t intended to affirm your psychosis, merely point out that it’s ok to be different; just don’t be a jerk about it. I want to affirm your uniqueness, because most of us have no idea what it is like to live with the stuff you have going on right now.

In the end we must, with Dorothy and Toto and the crew, come to grips with our own unlikely personality and pull away the curtain from the self-loathing and the lies and the constant attacks on self-esteem and personal worth. You cannot change your essential character without years of therapy so you may as well get comfortable in your own skin. If you are fat or flabby or balding or scarred, who cares! Go scare the kids at the beach and suntan a Happy Face on your back. Try bacon ice cream. Be as healthy as you can, workout if you want to, but when are you going to see beyond the flaws? How can we do this if we continue to hate ourselves?

You can do this – with a little courage, a little heart, and a brain in your head.

(I ran this past one of my readers and she commented, “lol, it take a lot more than a little courage, a little heart and a brain in your head! It’s more like being flayed and dragged through the streets naked and skinless! But I get your point. wink emoticon)

This Is How I Was Made

Published on July 5, 2015July 5, 2015 by Scott Williams13 Comments

Repeat after me, “This is how I was made”.

The word “cosmetics” is said to have a few origins but most believe it came from the Greek word “kosmos”, to make order out of chaos. A brilliant word. Eyeshadow, apparently, is intended to address an issue or enhance a feature. I guess. I’m not even sure what eyeshadow is. Which is the one where you use the Nazi torture device to pull on your eyelids? Reason number 127 why it’s great to be a guy. That peeing standing up thing is like number one through sixty-four. But I digress, as usual.

We all have parts we are not very proud of. If this hasn’t been your experience then just wait a year and get back to me. Gravity works. Even the beautiful people look like crap under fluorescent lights and north of forty. This is, sadly, referred to as reality. There are some things even Botox can’t fix.

I have worked with Fibromyalgia patients for a number of years now. Some of you who read here know me from that world. Fibromyalgia is a fascinating disease. It is literally true that, at least in my small piece of the pie, a majority of doctors still don’t believe in FM. I was once a skeptic; then did Intake for 5 years at a chronic pain clinic.

There are valid reasons why many do not believe in Fibromyalgia. We do not understand completely, and often this becomes a diagnosis of exclusion for many for whom the medical system has failed. There seems to be a myriad of causes and an internet full of “cures” which do not work. But that’s not why I am talking about FM.

I have patients, and some of you know who you are, who still struggle, often after a decade or longer, to even accept that they are sick. There is something insipid about this illness that, at least initially, seems random and normal and most undiagnosed Fibromyalgia patients tend to believe they may be “wimps”. Friends are often quick to point out that they “have pain too but still go to work so what is your excuse?”. In Canada we apologize before and after but it amounts to the same thing.

I cannot tell you the number of times FM patients have whispered to me that they secretly wish they had any other disease, even cancer. I am fully cognizant of how politically incorrect that sounds, but I am not actually advocating this position. I am only telling you what real people say all the time. So the question for the rest of us is, why would anyone wish for cancer?

No one really wants cancer, so a few of us can unbutton our corset a tad and just think about something we may not have considered. Cancer patients have Facebook Rallies and fundraisers and are said to be “courageous” and an “inspiration”. FM clients are often labeled as lazy or whiny or in the throes of a fake illness. I am in no manner seeking to diminish the terror of cancer, I’m just telling you a story. Families rarely understand, and I have watched spouses leave, and there is often a long slide towards immobility, a briefcase full of medications with side effects, and poverty. There are no parades for someone who has chronic fatigue, pain that changes almost daily, a labido that moved to Orlando, and looming mental health issues.

So when someone tells me they aren’t sure they have Fibromyalgia even though someone with a Mercedes told them, you can begin to appreciate how difficult it must be to accept something that no one understands, doctors dismiss as depression, displays symptoms which perpetually change, all with a spouse who is constantly disappointed in you.

You should be able to do more. You should be working or helping or horny or superdad or whatever. Who needs someone else to remind you of your shortcomings when you have the list memorized?

In counseling we come across Should Statements every day. I should be doing something else, right now. You should lose weight and you should go to the gym and you should eat more vegetables and less red meat. That’s super swell but you are still going to get old and die and I will be damned if I am going to go out without eating a few more KitKat Blizzards. Screw broccoli.

Body image is a little slice of that same pie. Umm, pie. But I digress.

I was never the eye-candy. When people who will never be the prom queen hear about the objectification of beautiful people it’s natural to secretly wish that someone would look at us like a piece of meat, as horrible as that may sound. I have had multiple clients admit this horrible secret when no one is there to judge them. Humanity spends billions trying to cover up stretch marks and crows feet and cellulite and baldness and facial hair and that unibrow your sister has going on. On television the hero is always beautiful and Steve Buscemi is never the leading man unless they want someone who is Hollywood ugly.

The only thing worse than constantly getting hit on is never getting hit on.

Most of us feel unappealing, from time to time. I have a growing list of things I do not like about my physical presence and you probably have one as well. I have spent years feeling ashamed of physical characteristics over which I have virtually no control. Time to give up, but not in a bad way.

You should still shower.

Give up the guilt and the pain and the constant need to measure up to standards imposed by Photoshop and duckface selfies. Give up the perpetual micromanagement of a battle you cannot win’ that most of us chase for all the wrong reasons. Antiperspirant, do not give up. You can still love your hair and buy Saxx underwear if you can afford it, that’s not the real issue. It’s not even about body enhancement or hair plugs or spray-on tans which look like you eat too many carrots, even if no one will tell you to your face.

Let’s all repeat together, “This is how I was made”. You can’t change some illnesses, injuries, or flaws. Sure, you can spend the money and do the stuff that makes you feel good about yourself, but perhaps it’s time to recognize that this is only a shell and I need to stop basing my self-worth on whether or not I look good in Lululemons.

I do not.

This is how I was made. I repeat it in my head, “this is how I was made”. I can either deal with this or live my life wishing I someone different. This is psychology, and psychology isn’t about words like “fair” or “should” or “someday”. We don’t learn to “wish upon a star” or base our retirement on winning the lottery. This isn’t about me pretending to have it all together or telling you something you haven’t heard a hundred times. This is about doing it, finally. Many of us have spent our lives caring far too much what random strangers and intellectual car bumpers think of us.

One of the sad truths you observe, sitting in this chair, is that most people do not learn this. It is tempting to hope that one day, when your ship comes in, things will finally line up for you, and the world will make sense, and you will get your much deserved reward.

In counseling we call this bullshit.

I watch people come back, year after year, and nothing has changed and they are still waiting for the world to punch their dance card (I’m not even sure what that means). Dr. Seuss sums it up swimmingly in his classic “Oh The Places You’ll Go”. I have referred to this psychological masterpiece on another occasion but these words continue to haunt:

Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come,
or a plane to go
or the mail to come,
or the rain to go
or the phone to ring,
or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil,
or a better break
or a string of pearls,
or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls,
or another chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

Everyone is just waiting.

This is the way I am. Tall, balding, aging, deeply flawed, excited, passionate, unpretty, childlike in wonder, and addicted to learning. That (and my Canadian Tire pool) needs to be “enough”. Fibromyalgia or not, beautiful or not, rich or not.

Repeat after me, “This is how I was made”.
Some of my FM clients are shaking their heads “no!”.

From A Talk With A Grade 6 Class About Drugs

Published on June 10, 2015 by Scott Williams3 Comments

nothing to do with drugs…

Hammer, Meet Nail.

Published on June 6, 2015June 8, 2015 by Scott Williams3 Comments

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer,
to treat everything as if it were a nail.
Abraham Maslow

Every week I get to hang out with Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police and feel moderately badass by proxy. It is a strange feeling, when I visit a crime scene, as it dawns on me that I am the only person in the group without body armour and a Glock. Police have an arsenal of weapons, not all of which are deadly. My colleague is a female member who has never had to pull her firearm. She may carry a lethal weapon but she is a master at diffusion, distraction, and de-escalation. Not all members are as adroit as my friend, however.

If your only option is a gun, there is a temptation to pull your weapon and wave it around at a group of teenagers at a pool party. You may have all sorts of issues with tasers but I still prefer taking a few volts to a bullet in the center mass, but that’s just me. The fact that the officer has other tools in her arsenal can keep me alive. Give me a baton to the head every time. I do, however, prefer a KitKat.

Though it is usually not referred to in such mechanical terms, counselors quite frequently talk about the hammer. If your ‘go to’ is heroin and your children are destroying your will to live, chances are you will eventually meander your way back to a dealer, in spite of best intentions. If all you have left is anger and yelling, then that’s the hammer you are going to employ when someone pisses you off. I know people who can cry at the drop of a hat, ensuring they never have to honestly address their dysfunction. Those who take offence, persons who run and hide, many who lie or control or freeze. For several reasons too convoluted to discuss here, much of society has a very limited toolbox; and for some of us, there is only a hammer.

I do not want to be your nail.

There are those who struggle with significant anger issues and love to swing their hammer around (I know, it works on two levels but we are pretending to be adults, so get your mind out of the gutter you perv). We all have that one relative who is overly quick to take offence. The chronically bitter, or negative, or just plain bitchy. A few of us find any reason to play the victim. If all you have is a hammer, as Maslow and others have stated, eventually everything begins to look like a nail. People use anger because it works. Whining works. Controlling can also work, if only for a time. It is shocking how often some people complain. Bitterness will paint your entire worldview. So can chronic depression, or trauma, or a boring and meaningless existence. Time for drastic change. It’s all or nothing. Delete your Facebook page, join the gym and take too many classes. Hammer away. Sure it may be the wrong direction but damn it, we’ll just drive faster. Don’t take crap from anyone. Punch that loser out. Go ahead, make my day.

Hammers are rarely subtle. Even the perceived criticism, fault, or indiscretion is an opportunity to swing away. When one has the most limited of resources (tools) than it is almost certain they will default to what they already know.

One has but to interact with a teenager to validate this hypothesis. When I was in my late teens I knew everything; my world was incredibly finite. Ignorance is its own reward; you get a world you understand and can control. Self-awareness invites a universe infested with chaos, impossible to contain. I did not know what I did not know, so I believed I knew. Now I know.

Teenagers tend to believe they can diagnose the world’s woes solely based on their limited and vastly overrated understanding of the meaning of life. This is just one reason why many teenagers are as stupid as lawn darts. Yes I said that, but you have felt the same way and let’s not pretend a fifteen-year-old is just an adult with pants that will not stay up. It is an unfortunate factoid that we tend to abuse our bodies and minds so completely during a time in our life when we have only a partially connected frontal lobe. Teenagers are brain-damaged in the most literal sense of the word.

Adolescence is also a time of increasing independence and self-determination; the same self-determination which led genius over there to drink rubbing alcohol this past weekend because it said the word “alcohol” on the white part of the label (don’t ask), and no one was going to tell him he couldn’t drink something that could kill him.

But I digress.

It is not just your pimply sixteen-year-old who likes to hammer out his problems. Men often do this in relationships as well. My wife wanted to tell me a story about her messed up day. She asked me for input. I made the mistake, yet again, of believing she actually wanted my brilliant solutions to her problem. I do this for a living and I make that rookie mistake day after day. Hammer, meet nail. Problem solved. You’ll be fine, as long as you pay attention and do exactly what I tell you. Women love it when I say that.

There is something deep inside me that enjoys being in control. I am tempted to believe my own narrative, the one where I convince myself about my need to be right.

Moving forward can mean having to learn new tools, new ways of acting and even reacting. Perhaps there is also a piece in there about letting go of a bit of the intensity that I manufacture to keep my world sane. Like many of us I am endeavouring to let go of tools which have been in my box for years; words like insecurity and grief and immaturity and my need to fit in. From here on it is critical that we develop tools which work, not just ‘used to work’. Anger and grief may have defined your existence but they don’t have to become a terminal illness.

One more thing. Hammers usually find a nail to hit. If I think the world is a horrible place I will probably be proven correct. There are no end to the reasons why I should be bitter, or angry, or depressed. Now is the time when I need to adjust my default mechanisms, my biases, in order to move forward. Anger often works but you may need to redefine what you mean by the word “works”. It may help you win that argument even if you have to destroy someone’s character to do so. Changing my automatic thoughts has proven to be an incredibly difficult challenge. Learning to think differently is ultimately the most powerful, albeit difficult, personal achievement on my radar.

The Priest

Published on May 30, 2015May 29, 2015 by Scott WilliamsLeave a comment

I was raised Italian Catholic and on church on Sunday. Before I realized that boys could be fun, my goal in life was to become a nun. At some point, our old church minister was traded for a younger model with modern thoughts and long hair. People talked. A lot. I wasn’t there, but one day he had had enough and he delivered a sermon on compassion and understanding then cut his hair off in front of the congregation.
We never saw him again.
I never went to church again.

Courage can come with many faces, many small decisions, many fear filled moments of strength. And sometimes you just get tired of the lies.

He came from a middle-class family, or so it can be imagined. We don’t know who his first love interest was or why he decided to become a priest. These sorts of tales often have a mentor or a spiritual uncle that had taken the cloth. Perhaps he knew uncertainty and desired something secure, complete. We must fill in the back story ourselves; but like many good yarn this isn’t about where you came from, this is about what you did.

Don’t tell me what you can do, show me what you will do.

In his book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths, author Kevin Dutton relates a conversation he had with a psychopath who refuted the notion that he was somehow more inherently brave than others. He was fearless, a military Seal with a reputation for a daredevil spirit and courage under fire. This patient argued that something cannot be considered an act of ‘bravery’ if it does not involve fear or any of the other myriad of negative emotions associated with facing certain death. How can you be brave if you have nothing to fear?

For much more than a millennia the pontiff of Rome (and occasionally other places but that’s a history lesson for another day. And yes there was once three popes) held life and death sway over virtually all of the European world and parts further askew. The supplicant must contend with a millenia of ritual, obedience, and unquestioning loyalty. Becoming a priest is a holy thing, superior even to a doctor or lawyer, and only slightly below an end table on Friends.

Priests are made, not born. A young child, virtually a toddler, learns to speak the words and dip and weave in time with the Service. This is a rich culture, and our young friend must have burned with passion for something wondrous, magical, something far bigger than this pitiful existence. Such a calling comes with a price; a life which will never feel the touch of a lover. No children to mourn your passing or keep you company when you are old.

Conformity on a scale unknown to most of society. It is not only the nun who is married to the church, the Bride. Religious Orders are not to be embraced lightly in a subculture with more than 1600 years of practice in weaning out the unworthy, the impenitent, the uncommitted. It can easily be argued that the Church has not always done an adequate job of straining out the deviation, but that is for another time.

So then, what was in his mind on that day when he burned it all to the ground? Why throw it all away to make a point? But alas, this is not really my tale to tell, I heard it from Candace. It is, after all, her story not mine:

I come from small coal mining community in the East Kootenays, Sparwood is a pretty small town. For most of my life, there were maybe about 3500 people in the entire place, most of them Italian Catholic, and first generation Canadians. They were tough, no nonsense people with coal dust and religion deep down engrained in them. Politics were a strong topic of discussion, often loudly, almost with militant enthusiasm.

The church, though, was a different thing. No one spoke badly about the church. That was hallowed ground. So I thought. Catholic nuns ran the only school in town, a big stone mausoleum of a building. I sucked in the religion like coal dust. I wanted to be a nun. I went to Sunday School and church every Sunday. I believed in the sanctity of the church. I was devoted, I as an idealist. I even had the habit. Full gear with the cross at 6 years old. I have the photo to prove it. Crazy stuff!

The minister in town had been around for years. I don’t remember much about him really except that he never really hung around us kids, but always kept an otherworldly distance, enough that I honestly thought he had an in with The Almighty. Some deeper, mysterious connection that the merely mortal would never know. He left town for retirement when I was a young teen, amid talk that he and the church secretary were doing more than typing up the Sunday sermon. I wasn’t entirely naïve, but this was my first experience with any real ’adult’ gossip, let alone about the church. I had been taught to respect my elders, and to mind my own business. Rumours spread quickly in a small town, and while I tried to ignore most of it, I remember feeling a little uncomfortable. I shouldn’t know this, and, even more, how could it be true. My world was black and white. I believed that a priest was supposed to be entirely above those kind of mortal faults. Reality was starting to set in.

Shortly after he left town, a new minister arrived. He was young, energetic, and full of new ideas. And he had long hair. It was the early 70’s. Everyone young had long hair and new ideas. But this was the church. The Catholic Church. In Sparwood. The nuns had only recently changed their habits from the full length semi burka of the old guard to a less modest version that relaxed the tight, white headgear that completely encased the head, and, heaven forbid, allowed a shorter skirt.

The new minister had a job ahead of him. Things went OK at first, but it wasn’t many months until the rumours began to spread; how this new guy was not what some members of the congregation expected, how his hair was too long, his ideas too at odds with the expected way things should go. I heard them vaguely, and dismissed them as people just getting used to something new. I was young and still naïve enough to think people would eventually get used to new ways and that the bad press would eventually dry up. I was obviously and sadly wrong.

The rumours persisted. In fact, they came with stronger wording, deeper passion than ever. I heard them more and more, as I often spent time with a new youth group the new father had begun as an effort to engage the young people in town. This was a first. It came at an important time for me, as I was a troubled teen, and badly needed a positive, caring example or two. I wasn’t the only one, as there was always a group of us in his home on a weekly basis, playing games and connecting, instead of getting into the trouble that could be easily had even in our small town. I liked this man as a human being. He wasn’t otherworldly. He really connected with his parishioners and I thought he really cared about us kids, beyond teaching doctrine. He really seemed engaged, and truly interested in people, more than almost anyone I had known in the church up to that time. I loved that he was approachable, compassionate, curious and human. I didn’t have to climb his pedestal to talk to him.

This was an entirely new type of priest, and I was excited to be part of this new, accessible church. I was late for mass the day he cut his hair in the pulpit, in front of the entire congregation. I came after the sermon ended. It was a very short mass. I understand that he gave a heartfelt talk on understanding and compassion. Most of all, I remember the congregation milling about outside after it was all over, speaking in hushed tones or not at all, lowered eyes, embarrassment and shame and concern in their voices. It felt like some kind of weird funeral. I was heartbroken. I never saw him again and I have no idea what happened to him after that. His actions may well have cost him his calling. I do know that I stopped going to church entirely.

My bubble had been burst, well and truly. Faith is a funny thing. I had placed faith in people –that they would be good and kind, that the truth would rise in the face of idle gossip. I believed that truth, my truth, would prevail in the end. I now know that these things are never just black and white. Good doesn’t always win over evil, positive over negative. It’s not like the movies. It’s never that easy. In my life, I am a conflicted character. I try to do what’s right, but I know that, often, I only succeed part of the time at best. I know I am flawed and I’m not entirely comfortable with that. I still admire those folks who bravely do the right thing, in spite of the cost.

Honour. I admire that. And, in spite of a decided knack to constantly screw it up, it’s something I still aspire to. And integrity. To try to do my best, even at my worst. I like to think that most of us are like that. But we get screwed up. We forget. We do stuff we don’t admire and often we don’t even see it. This guy, this man, he saw that. As a minister, but even more, as a human being. he chose to step up to the plate and show the rest of us what all those sermons on integrity, honesty, and truth really looked like.

Did his actions really matter? I can’t speak for everyone, but I can say that minister, whose name I don’t even remember – he left a lasting impression on me as a truly dedicated and real human being, and a genuinely loving and spiritual soul. I admire anyone who can forge a path against the tide, in spite of all it may cost. Those are the people whose actions renew my faith, inspire me, forge the path to the future. Wherever you are, thank you for that. In my eyes, that is truly the earthly and divine all blended into what is the best in all of us. And thank heavens for that.

Amen.

Here’s Your Mulligan

Published on May 25, 2015May 25, 2015 by Scott Williams6 Comments

I stumbled into a porn recently. I am keenly aware, at this very second, of how that must sound so please allow me to explain. I was out for coffee with a friend and we decided to sit in the courtyard by a Waves Coffee. Above the courtyard were residences with balconies. On the balcony directly above us is where you are supposed to now engage your imagination. It is remarkable, the acoustics of a suburban courtyard. Loud, even. My friend is much younger than I. Much much. It felt like a nuclear explosion, “Oh look at that cool cloud formation”. Followed next by, “Wow, that cloud formation looks like a carpet coming towards us!”. Followed by screaming, things breaking, wind… silence.

At first nothing registers. Then, slowly at first but increasing in awareness, it begins to dawn on you what it is you are actually listening to. This is followed closely by growing recognition and an icky feeling you cannot quite yet identify. There it comes.

Just like a bad porno itself, our eyes meet, my friend and I, and we both have a seriously messed up expression on our faces. Screams. Things breaking. Wind. But no silence.

There are times in life for which you cannot really plan. I have seen things in the past month, bizarre things. I love my job. As random as that might sound, my life is a series of small adventures broken up by days of boredom and groceries and driving. It is precisely those ‘moments’ which give my life purpose, depth, meaning. So much of my existence is wasted trying to get out of doing things only to realize that it is those precise things I am avoiding which bring richness to the monotony. I may be going out on a limb here but I’ve probably watched enough television to ensure that I’ve milked all the wisdom it deems to spew on me. People text all the bloody time and I text them back. My Facebook is an imagination feeder but it’s still noise, noise, noise. Phone, computer, TV, radio, texting, communicating, noise.

It is time to get in your kayak, and I’ll get in mine. Screw Melanoma, get a tan. Have you ever stuck your entire face in watermelon and if not, when? Last weekend my wife and I got out-of-town because sometimes we forget what it’s like to be friends amongst the noise. I will consider it a personal failure if I don’t get into the water before the end of June. Stop being so old and jump in a puddle before you become a grouchy old fart. No one cares about your medical problems, or mine for that matter. Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere may be a figment of my imagination but I can buy a lollipop and it’s sunny out, so two out of three ain’t bad.

Here’s the thing. Sometimes you have to say “screw it” to your own mental health issues and crap life. There are days when you have paid enough, suffered enough, confessed enough, and it’s time to go out for a beer with a friend on a patio. I know life sometimes blows and I promise to spend more than sufficient time feeling miserable; but right now it’s sunny out and I’m going to give you a Mulligan. I don’t golf but I know what the word means. Golfing may be great in theory, but there is enough frustration in my life without screaming bloody murder at a small white ball. I don’t like walking and they won’t let me go off-road with the carts so I quit golfing but I’m keeping the Mulligan.

Everybody deserves a do over, a day off, and a nap. Your problems are going to be waiting for you after you get out of the boat so you needn’t worry, you won’t miss anything. One of the principles that we teach clients in counseling does an excellent job of training my brain to move on, if only for a moment. I will teach it to you now and save you $90, or $275 if you think you need a medical person to confirm what your clinical counselor told you a couple of years ago. Like most counseling techniques this one is cheesy and only works for some people; though for more people than you would think if only we practiced this stuff enough to make anything work in the first place. Just saying.

One of the fundamental counseling tools clinicians teach is a variation on what I will call STOPP Therapy. STOPP Therapy is nothing more than learning how to stop yourself from having an emotional spike such as a panic attack, anxiety, or anger. STOPP Therapy is surprisingly efficacious, in spite of sounding stupid when you practice it. Learning to say “no” to my impulses may come very close to being the meaning of life, if not the primary way to rock at it. Just like listening to an accidental porno (I have probably never written those words before), learning to control my emotions is an insanely gradual process. Wisdom is the meshing of knowledge and experience, you simply cannot grow up without giving yourself time to grow up. This may not be the 10,000 hour rule but I can tell you from experience I was pretty dumb 20 years ago and aging may take many things but it leaves you with experience. And experience, when used correctly, becomes wisdom.

You aren’t alone when you discovered that, after all those years away, you did better in college than you thought you would. Unbeknownst to you, there was still an accumulation of time and learning and experience. Granted, many of us have squandered a bit of that time but what the hell, you’re here now so let’s get going.

Once I know a little more about STOPP Therapy it’s time to move happily on to our project for today, your “screw it” moment.

There was a time when, not so long ago as I would wish, I was very broken. I have written of this before and I’m not feeling self-indulgent so let’s roll along, shall we? In that time of my life it felt impossible to move forward, and even taking a few minutes off from my grief seemed unrealistic. After many many bad days I started to practice what I preached and gave myself permission to take 10 minutes off, then 20, 30, and eventually I went an entire day without crying because I forgot I was in pain. Just 10 minutes off. I would set my clock or microwave or phone. Bliss would last approximately 7 seconds then the nightmare would come knocking and I had to learn to say “no” to myself for 10 stinking minutes. Then 20. With time it got easier but not until I had failed first.

For some of us it is a struggle to control the chaos for 10 minutes or even 10 seconds. We have work to do. For others it’s the constant demands on our time from things we spawned or married or divorced or share life with. We all feel sorry for ourselves and sometimes feeling sorry for yourself is a very healthy thing. Other times not so much. One day I realized that no one really cared about my problems as much as I did; and most people went on their merry way and got a Blizzard, in spite of my life falling apart. Just the way it is. As Kant famously pointed out, there is the way I perceive the world and the way the world really is. For many of us that could include the cold hard understanding that there is a way we want the world to be, and then there is something called reality. The real world does not care if I am the hardest working person I know. It does not care if I burn out.

So one last time, please accept this Mulligan. You’ve definitely earned it. You have permission to take an hour off and go shopping or for coffee or perhaps something stronger. Play Catch with your friends or swing high at the park. I just realized that works on two levels. You may think you don’t have time for self-care but you are profoundly wrong. I’m sorry if that comes off as arrogant but on a philosophical level you can probably admit I’m right.

Screw it, I’m going kayaking. Somebody please tell my wife I was right.

Yeti Socks

Published on May 18, 2015 by Scott Williams10 Comments

I’m wearing them right now. They are grey with a big white yeti and the monogram, “Yeti or not, here I come!” in green. Classy. At a party, not so long ago, we stood in the kitchen and I noticed that virtually everyone were wearing the same old ugly boring white socks with the grey heel and toe. It occurred to me that there are indubitably other options besides suit socks and Superstore whites. I remembered making fun of my nephews at Christmas, they were wearing silly socks. I owe them an apology. Colton, you were right. This article is for you and your weird socks.

A few months ago Target went bankrupt in Canada. They had their ridiculous socks on sale for a month and I bought twelve pair. I have never purchased more than a supermarket 5-pack before so this was a step (get it? step). Red socks with a huge pencil down the outside. Canadian moose in blue and red and brown. A bulldog on a skateboard wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses, smoking a cigar. I defy you to find anything cooler than that, it simply cannot happen. Oh, and they are loud green. You only go around once.

I dress weird for someone who is supposed to be all grown up. I have pierced ears and I let my sons dress me. I have recently acquired a pork-pie hat. I don’t even care what people think anymore. One of the benefits of not being good looking is that you cannot base your self-esteem on your looks or you will eventually take up Fentanyl. I’ve started wearing suit coats with the hat. I dropped into Rex Cox and purchased clothing that had never even seen denim. For some reason I find that I enjoy dressing up, this late in life. When I’m eighty I plan to wear a pork pie hat and dress like a pimp.

Someone recently asked me if I was worried that “people” might think I was having a midlife crisis. My theory has always been that if you are weird all your life than people won’t notice when you have go crazy. My wife has commented, on more than one occasion, that she is worried if I lose my mind that she won’t notice any difference. That’s from the one paid to love me.

There is a great freedom in caring just a little less what everyone thinks about me. Again and again, amidst the noise and the noise and the noise, something whispers “Stop giving such a damn about everything!”. Most of us have lived our entire lives seeking acceptance from people who don’t understand loyalty or selfless love. We have been afraid to offend those whom we now realize were not bulletproof, and a few of them really weren’t even worth all the effort. It really is true, the few who have proven loyal and true don’t need me to impress them; they already know what a tool I am and they are still here.

Many of us have thrown away far too much of our lives trying to live up to the expectations of persons we would never trust alone with our children.

And that’s an important psychological tenet that we all know but few of us really know – we need to stop ruining our few good years to impress people who don’t matter. Most of my closest friends has surfed alongside me for decades without flinching. I can posture and bluff all I want, they can see right through it. If they tell me that I need to address something in my life I try to listen. Everyone else can screw off. If my pal Sue takes me aside and sticks her finger in my chest I do not flinch because she has earned it. Living my life to impress everyone around me is a treadmill to hell to which I am no longer willing to subject myself. Anyone who knows me understands how poorly I have done in this arena at the best of times. I am endeavoring, as are many others on this journey, to live my life for something more than the shallow approval of people who are broken and often incapable of being an authentic friend.

I once heard a preacher say, “When you get to heaven God isn’t going to ask you “why weren’t you more like Billy Graham?”, he’s going to ask you, “Why weren’t you more like you?” I’ll take wisdom from wherever I can find it. My clients consistently struggle with self-care because self-discovery is an undervalued commodity in our culture. We are allergic to selfishness and have canonized a dysfunctional historical narrative, the belief that all selfishness is evil; and become a society of insecure and misunderstood people absorbed by false modesty and an addiction to external confirmation.

If you get nothing else, chew on this. I am no good to the many people who depend on me if I am sick. It is imperative that we understand how awesome a deal this really is, once you get your head around it. I’m ordering you to spoil yourself, take care of yourself. Self-care cannot be optional in a world this crazy and painful. The more I invest in my own holistic health, the better I am as a husband, father, professional, and ultimately authentic person. I absolutely love the idea that my mental health is so important that I must eat more KitKat Bars and spend time kayaking when I should be doing renoes. Can I get an amen?

One more thing. None of us has time. I cannot exaggerate how many people have come into my office and, when challenged to dedicate more time to self-care, have unequivocally informed me that they are not like my other clients. They have kids and soccer and career and money and stress and anxiety and SSRI’s and the constant grind of responsibilities and a life that cannot remember what fun looked like. Blah blah blah. Sit in this chair long enough and it dawns on even the stupidest of us that for some reason most of our lives are far too busy and many of you are one wet toilet seat away from punching a baby. Every single one of us is trying to stay afloat in sea of caca.

Counselors tell you this crap because it isn’t only theory. We get paid to hear 20 or more clients every week tell us the exact same story and so when I tell you to take care of yourself I’m not telling you as ‘friend’ Scott. I get paid to take care of my emotional health and I haven’t figured it all out either but this one thing I know, people who don’t take care of themselves can blame anything they want, but at the end of the day everyone else will move on with their lives. “I have no time” is easily the most frequent excuse, I mean reason, that I hear every week.

It’s a holiday, here in Canada. This morning I woke up in Redmond, Washington where they are already prepping for Memorial day next weekend. So enough with the heavy stuff. As your online therapist for a day I recommend you find a place in the sunshine with a cold drink and a hot book. I plan on making “American Iced Tea” tomorrow in the sun and maybe play Catch. All that noise in your head will be waiting for you when you get home, don’t worry. Mindfulness can mean washing out my kayak tomorrow and putting on the roof racks. I may need a therapeutic Kitkat Blizzard as well.

Doctor’s orders.

Welcome My Little Goldfish

Published on May 18, 2015May 18, 2015 by Scott Williams1 Comment

Many were surprised when Microsoft, the people who brought you the digital world you live in, announced this week that they have conducted extensive studies and to virtually no one’s surprise who has been paying attention; we now have a poorer attention span than a goldfish.

The 54-page study sought to understand what impact technology and today’s digital lives are having on attention spans. The researchers collected data from surveys of more than 2,000 Canadians over the age of 18. They played games and interacted online to help scientists determine the impact of smartphones and other digital media on everyday life. Participants’ brain activity was recorded and behaviour was filmed while they interacted with different social media platforms across .

By now you should be at least a little suspicious of media surveys but this particular study has a ring of truth to it. Many of us in the psychology game have been noticing something of this ilk for years. Society in general has become addicted to instant and now. I consider the Tap option on my credit card one of the greatest inventions since the wheel. This week a small vendor made me sign an actual Visa bill and I was almost offended. How quaint. Recently, while at an automated teller the person next to me complained that the little machine that gives you money was taking too long. This reminded me of the brilliant sketch by Louis C.K. called Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy. If you haven’t seen it, it will become a classic. I’m old enough to remember when the first debit card came out. You put your card in and apparently a monkey or one of the staff that no one liked pushed cash out of a window for you. At least that’s what I remember thinking the first time I tried this new technology.

LOUIS C.K.: Yea, because everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy. Like, in my lifetime the changes in the world have been incredible. When I was a kid we had a rotary phone. We had a phone that you had to stand next to, and you had to dial it. Do you know how primitive – you’re making sparks – in a phone. And you actually would hate people with zeros in their numbers because it was more – you’d be like “uh this guy has two zeros in his number, screw that guy, why would I want to-uh!” And then if they called and you weren’t home the phone would just ring lonely by itself. And then if you wanted money you had to go in the bank, when it was open for like three hours.

My in-laws had a “party line”.

It is impossible to foretell the devastating impact technology will have on the future. The global village has changed everything from how often I have to talk to people I thought I ditched twenty years ago to the exacerbation of cultural morality and the decline of religion in the western hemisphere. The internet has literally transformed the world forever. We take for granted technology that would have been considered witchcraft only a few generations ago. Again Louis hits it on the head.

LOUIS C.K.: Well yea ‘cause now we live in an amazing, amazing world and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots that don’t care, because this is what people are like now – they’ve got their phone and they’re like “uh! It won’t…” Give it a second! Give – it’s going to space! Can you give it a second to get back from space!? [laughs]

I was on an airplane and there was high-speed internet on the airplane – that’s the newest thing that I know exists. And I’m sitting on the plane and they go “open up your laptop, you can go on the internet.” And it’s fast and I’m watching YouTube clips – it’s amaz – I’m in an airplane!” And then it breaks down, and they apologize the internet’s not working. The guy next to me goes “phff – this is bulls%$^!” Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed ten seconds ago.

Flying is the worst one because people come back from flights and they tell you your story and it’s like a horror story – they act like their flight was like a cattle car in the forties in Germany – that’s how bad they make it sound. They’re like “it was the worst day of my life. First of all, we didn’t board for twenty minutes, and then we get on the plane and they made us sit there on the runway for forty minutes we had to sit there.” Oh really what happened next? Did you fly through the air incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight you non-contributing zero?! You’re flying! It’s amazing! Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going “oh my God! Wow!” You’re flying! You’re sitting in a chair, in the sky!

But it (the seat) doesn’t go back a lot. And it’s not really –

The impact of everything from texting to Facebook to your new Smart TV has yet to be determined. Society must grapple with the psychological, spiritual, and socioeconomic impact of such a monumental swerve in the history of civilization that some day historians will look at the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Nihilism and impact of Two World Wars and then the textbook will open to a chapter on what the world looked like when you were alive. It is impossible to exaggerate how different the world has become from even your grandparents time. It has been an amazing time to be alive.

Unfortunately they will not only write about all the wonderful things you could do with your smart phone. Psychologists will better understand the incredible impact that carrying around a personal computer while texting 150 times a day will have on your neural pathways. Have you not noticed that the world around you seems to have become more frantic? I don’t remember feeling the need to speak with all my friends every day when I was younger. I am uncertain as to what benefit my cell phone and laptop have brought to my life. Here’s what the article said about the conclusions they found:

The team measured their attention levels and activities to view how attention varied by screen, task, content type and structure. The findings revealed human attention span has fallen from an average of 12 seconds in the year 2000 to just eight seconds today.

The decrease was seen across all age groups and genders in the study. Those in the age group of 18 to 34 had a 31% high sustained attention span compared to those age 55 and over at 35%. Meanwhile, males (33%) had a better attention span than females (31%).

Call me a Luddite but there appears to be a correlation between the increasing invasion of technology into our lives and the overwhelming stress that pounds in many of our brains. I tease many of my female clients that it must be scary to have a brain like theirs. Always going, always spinning and thinking, processing and worrying. Many, many of my clients complain that they do not know how to shut their brains down.

I am convinced that learning to wrestle back control of one’s impulses and attention span may well be one of the most important and arduous psychological disciplines that no one is teaching. Most of us are convinced that our brain is out of control and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Most of us are wrong.

Any counselor worth their paycheck can teach you how to stop that runaway train from going off the rails. There are skills, very cheesy skills, that you can practice until the demons are at bay. I’ve been using one method for six years and it works about 40% of the time. By learning one methodology I have been able to decrease my problem 40%. That is a staggering success. I learned it on the internet, in spite of the fact that I am in school and working as a professional counselor full-time. Professionals who tell you that there is nothing you can do about your mental health issue are tools.

The Wolf At The End Of My Lane

Published on May 13, 2015May 13, 2017 by Scott Williams4 Comments

I had a wolf. Well, not really; I should back up. There was a huge grey wolf at the end of my drive.

I would see him, I assume it’s a him, every few months. He would suddenly appear in the culvert, at the end of my lane, as I drove by. One day I stopped. One day I got out. The big grey wolf at the end of my lane.

I have never shared this tale before, and I’m not entirely sure why not. Perhaps it is because such a claim is impossible to verify and reeks of hyperbole. It may not have even really been the same wolf. But I know what I remember, and since no money is changing hands and I will never be famous, let me tell you a true story.

Before coming to the Left Coast of Canada I lived in the north, Fort McMurray Alberta, to be precise. It’s a weird place where welders make $150,000 a year and everyone wishes they were somewhere else. I lived on a ranch.

It appears that 25 minutes from the downtown of a northern city is too far for most commuters so we lived on 85 acres, in a beautiful cedar home with 22 feet floor-to-ceiling windows. We paid a little less than the cost of an apartment in town.

People in Fort McMurray buy toys, but I’m not talking about the dirty thought you just had. Snowmobiles and boats for a lake that is only tolerable for six weeks in the summer. Big trucks and expensive trips to the West Edmonton Mall and debt that staggers the imagination. My old town. The thing about toys are, they take up space. I had a ranch and someone needed a place for four horses. I had a barn and a friend wanted a dry place for three snowmobiles, including the keys. Someone else needed a home for a motorcycle, then a minibike, then a tractor, then more and more things with motors. Not bad for the price of a condo.

In the winter I would come home most days and take out one of the snowmobiles for a run, just so it would not rust. I am very considerate that way. I forgot to mention that I lived off a lake, but not near the beach. By January you could drive a Semi on any lake in northern Alberta and have a trucker hoedown with little fear. I loved to surf the powder on the lake at the end of a day listening to people’s problems. I was practicing mindfulness, or at least that’s what I told my wife.

One afternoon after work, as the sun was already beginning to set, I nearly drove into a pack of wolves running across the lake. Though we came from different directions we seemed to be aiming for the same destination. As I neared the pack there was my wolf, staring at me as he ran, not a care in the world. Maybe it was the shock of seeing that very wolf, or maybe it was the meds, but I didn’t drive away that afternoon. Almost naturally I came alongside this group of predators and on that day they let me run with the pack. I slowed, and we ran, and it was… glorious.

Into every life a little karma must fall and on that day someone was looking out for me. I was given a gift and a casual nod and, in spite of the artificial cacophony of the machine, permission to play. I felt something that day – something old. The wolf at the end of the lane knew me. To run with wolves, that is something out of Tolkien or Lloyd Alexander.

I wish I could still run.

It appears my body is breaking down. Years of sports and abuse and frozen pizzas have left their tan lines; and all the colon cleansers in the world can’t stop the march of time. It’s the game everyone gets to lose.

Some of you have been pretty all your life. This was never a cross I was called to bear. People who are good-looking may seem to be getting a better deal on everything because chances are they do. As a general rule pretty people get preferential treatment and tall people make more money; there is science to verify this. Some of you still haven’t yet paid for a drink in a bar but hold on, your time is coming. You are getting uglier. Ya, me too.

As a Canadian I feel compelled to wrap that comment up in a beautiful bow and deliver it to you in a passive-aggressive little pile of bullshit, but I will leave that sentence alone (I deleted the line with “uglier” three times because at heart I really just want you to like me). We are all aging, at varying rates. Television shows seem more and more to feature children who barely shave and yet have somehow had time to learn eight languages, get a black belt in Karate, and a doctorate in neuropsych.

Anyone who reads this drivel knows that I frequently write about philosophy, along with the regular psychology menu. I am currently on the slowtrack to a doctorate in my own particular weird blend of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Existentialism. I was fortunate that in my undergraduate degree I met people like Dave and Dan who delighted in daily jettisoning my preconceptions about virtually everything. They were my educational mentors and I am in their debt. I was given permission to think, and this has had a profound and ofttimes negative impact on my life to this day.

Few of us get healthy by accident. There is simply too much going on in the Twenty-first Century for most of us to stay emotionally well and positive in outlook. The promised future, replete with free-time and pastel jumpsuits, never materialized and most of my friends are stressed out of their minds and one Koolaid spill from taking out the village. Everyone has mental health issues and if you don’t just wait a week.

I have mentioned this before but I find it hard to even listen to a client who isn’t learning. I’ll put that more gently. I cannot think of one client who is really rocking this mental health thing who is not either a student or a reader or a serious life-learner. Last week I spoke at a martial art and ranted, “if you don’t read, you don’t lead”. That may sound narrow-minded or condescending but consider for a moment the world we find ourselves in. We no longer have the luxury of being ignorant about a host of things we never gave a crap about before the internet and media age. For thousands of years people had no idea what was happening and seemed to survive quite swimmingly. Our lives are a bombardment of manic media sources, Facebook and texting and Google and Xbox and our friends informing us that they arrived safely at the Red Lobster on 38th Street like I should give a damn. Our world is complex and dysfunctional and we were not given the tools to understand the how, let alone the why. I honestly have no idea why people who are not learning don’t lose their mind. Some days I wonder if I am too stupid and I do this for a living.

I could be wrong but I know what works for me. I have convinced myself that I want to be smart and I fell back in love with learning, and so have my Jedi friends who put me to shame. My life was once filled with music and noise and traffic. Today I was listening to “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief” on the drive to work. I drove slower than usual because I was on the part where they talk about the Sea Org and I have a sick fascination with cults. I had coffee with a friend this week and as she left she put on her earbuds. She was listening to “The Wisdom of Psychopaths“. I can virtually guarantee you that she is growing and moving forward.

Those who embrace the experience, rock the experience.

Few of us realize, that first month of counseling, that becoming a wise person requires tens of years of work, not weeks. In time the discipline no longer feels like drudgery and you begin to surf a little more consistently. In time this stuff changes your entire world and everyone around you if you let it.

My Anger, Myself

Published on April 14, 2015April 14, 2015 by Scott Williams3 Comments

Living with someone who is always angry can be one of the most difficult relationship entanglements one could endure. Few problems in this life have as immediate and devastating an impact as anger. If rage is your thing you are probably hell to live with. Just saying.

As pedestrian as it may sound, I often compare anger to an orgasm. There is a point of no return and the house can burn down, you are going to finish. I have witnessed angry persons spewing hate while screaming with astonishingly high degrees of emotion and intentionality. Most angry people feel better after they have “gotten it out”. They have just ejaculated their negative energy and mental health problems on everyone around them and it’s time for a nap. I have written about this before, and graphic this may be, but I’ve known many angry people. Anger is often violent and it’s far easier for the object of wrath to check out than try to match that energy. Some people are much too emotionally invested in obviously trivial matters. You get insanely pissed about tomatoes and I’m not committed enough to vegetables to ruin our relationship over root veg, but apparently you are. Yes I know it’s technically a fruit but as David Mitchell says, don’t get me started. If you put it in a fruit salad it’s a fruit. Next thing you know someone is going to tell me that cucumbers are a fruit. Maddening, but I just remembered that I don’t care about that kind of thing anymore. Mostly.

It is very difficult for me to exaggerate how important it is to deal with unrealistic anger. If you are a person who is easily angered and would admit, after a few shots of tequila, that you might have an “anger issue”, than as a therapist I want to encourage you not to beat yourself up or give up hope. Rage is an extremely palpable emotion that slams you with all manner of intense brain chemicals. Anger is intoxicating, orgasmic. There is an instant and physical reward for such emotions and as an added bonus you get to feel like a real badass. Angry people win arguments and get what they want, at least right now. Cut me off in traffic and I’ll follow you home and wave a chainsaw at your children, or something like that.

There are a few people I would like to talk with about their anger but they are scary when they get mad. We owe it to ourselves to be brutally honest and recognize that life really really really isn’t fair and it’s not my job to go Punisher on that moron who didn’t wait at the 4-way stop.

If you are living life with someone who is angry, the bad news is there is very little you can do about it. You can never love enough or give enough or sacrifice enough to fix that cancer in someone else. Chances are, living with someone with this issue has changed how you cope or even who you are becoming. The angry person is always willing to take the argument beyond where you are comfortable. The only recourse that gives lasting results is fixing myself first, until that person can no longer drive me crazy or they die from an aneurysm they so justly deserve.

This always sounds like bad news when we first hear it. We want that other person to change, they are the problem. There is no way you can cope with them as they are. They literally have to win every argument. They are willing to hurt me in places where people who love us should never wander. It is impossible to cope with what is going on around me right now… I hear the words almost every day.

You might be right. There is no way you will ever be able to cope until you do it on purpose. I’ve counselled hundreds of couples and I know the smell of abuse when I hear it. Fear is a powerful emotion as well. For some reason where there is anger, there is usually fear not far behind. Why else would she stay with him or he with her after what that person has done? Fear. Anger is a very useful tool if you wish to control. Violence has always worked, for a while. That’s what that outburst was, when you consider the options. Angry people seem violent, in spite of their constant protestations to the contrary. Screaming is violent control-seeking and is never ok unless you are yelling at a puck or a racist.

I have recorded couples fighting and most are clearly shocked when they watch themselves give in to anger and blow their load on someone else. It happens almost every time; they will turn in their chair and ask their partner, “Am I really like that?”

“Do you really think of me as a violent person?” Pretty much, but none of us are going to tell you, it’s just not worth the fight. See how that works there?

Spouses of angry people are often passive-agressive, or struggle with anxiety or depression or cutting or fatalism. They are often the sweetest among us, those who find their fulfillment in giving everything to a man or a woman that they believed charming and passionate. Passion is a wonderful thing when they are amorous, it’s another thing altogether when they get mad. Violent people tend to be attracted to nice people who will take it and tell their friends, “He just had a really stressful week” for the four-hundredth time.

If you know that you struggle with anger in an unhealthy way, it’s completely appropriate to talk to someone. Tell your partner and family that you acknowledge you have an issue and wish to do something about it. Don’t shut this down; don’t miss out on the good stuff because you can’t free yourself from this impulse-control issue. I do not seek to make light of this problem, quite the contrary. We all need help, from time to time. Anger is nothing more or less than one of the dysfunctional coping mechanisms many of us learn in childhood, or in our first marriage, in order to help us cope with a crazy and dangerous world. We have done the best we knew how but it is important to keep morphing. The more I learn the more light I am given. This is a critical psychological principle which most people will never understand. We must not stay ignorant, or broken, or miserable. Yes I acknowledge that there are times when such thinking not only seems foolish, it feels dangerous. It is in those times, when I was convinced that the situation was hopeless, that I learned the most. I was stronger than I imagined.

If you are living with someone who is angry, you are not alone. Many of us are seeking to understand the sheer magnitude of our addiction to coping mechanisms which have not worked in years. I need to stop trying to change my partner and learn to invest more diligently in my own reality and the need to unlearn my past.

I hate that I can only change myself, but I no longer live in Narnia.

I Don’t Give A Crap

Published on April 13, 2015 by Scott Williams3 Comments

The Princess Bride is, unquestionably, one of my favourite movies. I own the novel. There is something about a magical story, with giants and accents and the Dread Pirate Roberts with which we resonate. A great story can take us to places in our imagination that playing Minecraft simply cannot. Reading matters. My clients have all had the lecture – you don’t read, you don’t grow as fast as you want to. It doesn’t matter how you get your fix, I listen to 90% of my books. What matters is that you are constantly exposing yourself to good ideas.

My wife thinks I actually like Facebook. The truth is, and I’ve written of this in the past, I really do “like” Facebook, in spite of hating Facebook because I want to be a hipster. I have unsubscribed to most of your updates and I really don’t care if you take a selfie on your next trip to Red Robin. My Reader looks nothing like it once did; it’s my daily source for archeology, psychology, philosophy and spirituality and religion and English comedy and Scottish history, Brain Pickings and Cracked and Mental Floss. Most of us on this journey are reading constantly, though some have not yet discovered the thrill of an old book. A surprising number of us start thinking about science, eventually. Some begin to dream about going back to school, though most eventually convince themselves that they are too old or too stupid or too pragmatic. As usual, I digress.

Some times in our lives define us.

My boys and I communicate primarily with media quips and movie quotes; it’s hard to explain if you don’t know what I mean. I was a single dad for the majority of my children’s lives. We had a foosball table, not a dining table. Black couches. As the boys got older, quotes from The Simpsons and Family Guy found their way into many conversations. We began to communicate in prose. We tried to talk like The Boondock Saints and memorized classic children’s literature and Die Hard. People were lost in conversations when the Williams boys were around. Quotes from Descartes and Homer, Simpson. Samurai Pizza Cats and Recess and Roger Miller singing, “Robin Hood and Little John running through the forest”. My guys know history and philosophy, psychology and how to ignite methane. It was the worst time of my life. It was the best time of my life.

I would not wish a life of single-parenting on you, but cannot begin to describe how much I have learned, through it all. My kids are, if I think objectively, way better than your kids. I mean nothing by this, they’re simply amazing young men. We still talk in Simpson’s quotes and share a closeness for which I am daily thankful. We all know that we are so tight because of the tears, not in spite of.

I listen to many speakers in the course of a month or a year. I have my favourites, most of whom are dead. Great speeches, like great comedy, is usually born out of pain. When discussing a preacher or poet or prose-master I am prone to comment, “he hasn’t suffered yet”. There are lessons you can learn only from the dark side. Being a single parent for all the wrong reasons was easily the most difficult and transformational time of my life. There was before The Event and there was after, and this is definitely after. I find it difficult to listen to those who have never bled.

If I’ve learned anything, doing this for a living, it’s that most people suffer far more than they let on. Many have experienced hardship on a level we could never have imagined. People who have been broken have wisdom that others simply don’t have. Some of us have issues as well, to be perfectly honest. Becoming bitter is the easiest thing in the world, north of 40. Many describe themselves as “realists” because they like pink clouds and unicorns. Truth be told, the older I get the easier it becomes to wear my damage like a badge of honour. Being happy becomes something that I have to work on. You may not have noticed but there are some nasty folks out there. Some of us live and love very negative kin. A few of us are a tad more sarcastic than we really need to be.

Most of my readers know I love my old man. If you broke your leg he would convince you that having a cast was the best thing ever! Women feel the love, my dad totally has game. He thinks your zit is charming. You’re beautiful just the way you are, have that bagel. His nickname is Happy Howie. He inspires me to not give up on idealism, on choosing to be happy in spite of all the crap. His life has been anything but easy. Growing up as an orphan, living as an adult while still in middle school, no one handed him anything. Ever. If you visit the Home Hardware in Invermere just stop and listen for his whistle. Everything is wonderful, wonderful.

There are people in my life that cannot seem to stop complaining. Life is difficult for them. I no longer wish to live in that world. Sure Isis may attack or that damn government needs to smarten up, but frankly I am learning not to care quite as much anymore. The research is in and it all points to giving less of a fart about the daily junk that I won’t remember in a week anyway. Most of us spend the majority of our lives stressing about toothpaste and taxes and hoping we won’t die alone. So boring. I no longer care if my neighbour likes my lawn, it’s all crabgrass anyway. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about so many things that used to drive my mania, though I still have a long way to go. I have been challenged to practice this mindfulness exercise, caring less. I need to figure out how to lower my expectations of life.

As my dad always says, “If it doesn’t affect my pension or my grandchildren, I don’t give a crap.” He’s no idiot, my old man.