Ohevolve.com-A blog by Katy Steinkamp

Thursday/ June 23, 2017
Road Trip
Entry 1 from a series of 6.

Temperature is up from 117 in Vegas, so I called my sister, Dianne, to take a road trip. She is up for it. I hopped a flight to Charlotte, and here we are barreling down I77 to Florida to meet David and Rosie at Bud’s old beach
house at Matanzas Inlet where we all spent many happy days of our childhood.

I thought it might be fun to take you along with me, especially since our car trips often turn into Uncle Wiggley adventuress. In the interest of simplicity I will introduce the players in the order they appear.

We’ll begin with my older sister, Dianne, who was born thirteen months before I got here. She is my closest, best friend and for good or for ill we know just about everything about each other. That means we fight like we might kill each other and, so far, eventually get back to loving.

There will be one sibling who won’t make an appearance. Our precious older brother who was so sensitive to the cruelties of life, killed himself about eight years ago. It wasn’t much of a shock since his entire life led him to that point. He had a horrible accident with a chemistry set and very badly burned himself when he was fifteen and was wrapped in gauze from head to toe for six to nine months. He was in excruciating pain. This was back in the 50’s, and he was on hospital narcotics for a very long time- the beginning of his end.

So, anyway, we’re driving to Summer Haven to meet with the family. We head with delicious anticipation to the Florida/Georgia line looking for The Georgia Pig as our first stop. Oh No!!! The world- famous roadside barbecue stand is gone!! Best pulled-pork in the South, served with slaw and beans or chips. It is with great grief we pull back on the highway headed for Savannah. We don’t know where exactly, but both of us are sure we will find another unique and memorable, new favorite barbecue in Savannah.

We took the second Savannah exit off the freeway and drove straight into Tripp’s in an old corner gas station deep in the heart of Savannah. A group of beautiful mahogany men and women, and one old, befuddled white guy. He was cackling as he circled the ladies who were sitting in the shade cooling themselves with church fans. We left 30 minutes later with enough barbecue to feed half-a-dozen people and good enough to leave them moaning for more.

Back on the highway, driving while distracted eating ribs and chicken and headed straight to Crescent Beach and Summer Haven where the Atlantic Ocean roared into our hearts so many summers ago. Arguably the most beautiful meeting of the sea and sand in the universe. Hyperbole aside, it is my vision of the powerful God of my youth. At times peaceful, warm and seductive. At times angry, dangerous and all consuming . This is the place where the meaning of family fell apart and came together again. The big wrap-around porch with the rockers lined up and the hammock hung on the corner. Many a sunrise was met in that hammock. Hurricanes and storms and racing to shut the shutters and batten the house down before the storms arrived. Many a drama played out within those walls…

David, my younger brother by two years, met us at the top of the stairs of the A1A house in Matansas. It was so good to see him. My heart is always warmed when I see his face and kiss his cheek. My sister Rosie too, who was the “girl next door” until they married after they were graduated from the University of Florida in 1966 or so. They fill my heart right up with love and peace. Together they created three fabulous women, Jennifer, Chrissy and Kelly, all of whom are there to greet us! Yea, Family!

A small rant about family:
Families are fantastic for reminding you of your limits. They will love you unerringly and then toss you about picking at and pointing out your faults.
Everybody comes from somewhere and someone. As Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

When we come together life happens then in predictable stages.

Beginnning: How great to see you. You look wonderful. How’s the kids?

Middle: You voted for that ass? You always were crazy. I love you but you’re nuts.

End: I love you so much. I’ll miss you terribly. Come see me in Vegas!

Families bring out the best and worst of us. and like it or not we all come with one.

To Be Continued …..I apologize for the lapse of time between this entry and the last.

 

My wonderful, young cousin, Gene Gregory, just died.  I live in Nevada and he lived in Florida so I didn’t get to see him before he was gone. But I talked with him on the phone about his cancer and how he felt about dying. He told me he wasn’t worried too much about it but he hated the fact that he wouldn’t be around to see how everything turns out.

Gene was a curmudgeon. He had no filter from his brain to his words so if you asked his opinion on anything you got it. His passions went from love to hate, depending on what you asked him. He did not suffer fools gladly.  If he thought it, he said it. And he was one of the funniest and dearest people I have ever known.  He was rough, but if he loved you he did so with a passion.  My mother was an example of someone he loved – partly because they’d drink a case of beer together whenever he dropped by.  Partly because they were a great deal alike in their lack of a filter. They’d be sitting at the round coffee table at the beach raving-on about politics, people and personal issues.  Gene would defend Mama when we would complain about her drinking. He’d say “She likes her beer. What’s wrong with that?” By that time, he had a point.

Gene’s great passion was deep sea fishing. Oh my gosh, he could find Sailfish in the sea. He could find all kind of fish and he entered tournaments and won prizes and his smile was as wide as the sky. Many a picture I have seen with Gene and his catch with that smile plastered on his face. Then he’d take them home and serve a banquet of the finest fish you ever tasted.

Gene was funny. He spent all of his time when we were very young children being the clown and making us all laugh till we couldn’t breathe.

He had one son and he loved Jesse with the greatest passion of his life. Jessie woould go fishing with his dad. I met Jesse just once, but I was impressed with his love for his father- genuine and deep. I think Jesse will be like Gene in his love of the sea.

I think Gene was still married to Linda when he died. And if he was she would have been right there by his side, loving him in spite of himself.  Linda is a very patient woman. Gene was lucky.

Gene’s mother, my Aunt Bunny, is still alive in her late 90’s, and I hear from her daughter Judy Grovesner she is not doing well and is in Hospice care.  She’s in her mid to late 90’s.  She’s probably waiting for Gene to get there (wherever) and get the place ready for her and then she’ll let go too.

These are all people I love very much. Isn’t it funny that the loves we grow up with stay with us forever even if we don’t see them as often when we’re older.  Judy, Gene, Aunt Bunny and Uncle Jack.  Part of me is definately due to their wonderful influence.

A light has gone out in my world and I will miss him.  I hope Gene likes where he is now so much that he won’t even worry how it all turned out!

 

​Recently, a number of patients have been struggling with the idea of how much control they have when bad things happen. Divorce, death, problems with children, spouses, financial troubles, medical problems—those issues in life which leave us feeling powerless, frustrated, angry or depressed. We struggle with the idea that something, or someone, is beyond our ability to change or control.
​There are times in life when, in spite of our desire or pain, we are helpless to change the reality of our experience. What we can do, however, is change our attitude about that reality. And we do that by accepting that we are unable to control these circumstances or events, and accept the reality of what is happening.
​When a loved one dies, we can do nothing to change that reality—except to accept the grief of the loss—understanding that the pain we feel is not necessarily directly correlated to the quality of love we shared with the other. When we are laid off from our job, we can be angry and rail at the world about the injustice of it all—for a brief time, but if we get stuck in our anger and resentment it will not change one thing about our reality except to make us bitter and lost.
​

The Serenity Prayer is arguably one of the greatest gifts of the 20th century. It is profoundly simple in its message:

​God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I can not change
​The Courage to change the things I can
​And the Wisdom to know the difference.

It’s in the acceptance of our lives that we come to learn the most profound lessons. This doesn’t mean however, that we do nothing. To do that is to fall into depression. The second and third lines are equally important as the first in the prayer. How many heroes do we know in our lives who have turned tragedy into activism or triumph? In my practice I am often awed by the ability people have to survive the personal tragedy and frustrating circumstances of their lives. People who have lost a child to SIDS who, as part of their grief process, become active in the SIDS Foundation. Cancer patients who become as knowledgeable about their disease as their doctors. Knowledge is power. Couples who, after discovering one has been unfaithful to the other, work together to not only mend the breach but to go on to make their marriage even more intimate and loving than before.
There is an attitude we take in our lives, an attitude of trusting the process of our lives—especially with difficult experiences—that allows us to find the miracles of life. Even in tragedy.

A completely fabricated tale I wrote while waiting for friends to join me at Mohonk Mountain House, a historic Victorian Castle Resort in Upstate, NY. Its a game I play if I find myself somewhere with a lot of time on my hands and a lot of people around me. I find someone and imagine their life, and sometimes I write it down.
Hope you enjoy….

It is teatime at the Mohonk Resort when I spot him at a table in front of the fire. His face is weathered with deep crags and grooves. He is waiting for her to return with his tea and cookies. There is a slight edge of panic in his eyes. He does not like needing her. Once he made all of the decisions and she carried out his wishes. Now he is forced by age and circumstance to depend on her, and he hates it.
She returns with the tea and cookies and he peers over her arm anxiously as she counts out one, two, three for you. One, two, three for me. Unsmiling and stern he slides them over and begins to nibble. He was once a strong man. He has a square, powerful jaw but he eats the cookies like a prim and proper lady afraid to drop a single crumb on the table. He glances over at her through horn-rimmed, Coke bottle-bottom glasses. his eyes magnified by their thickness. She faintly smiles. They don’t speak. He simply stares sternly ahead chewing his cookies and daintily sipping his tea. He doesn’t appear to be aware of the beautiful view of the Mountains so elegantly displayed through the spotless floor- to- ceiling windows in the tearoom. This moment is his entire world – the tea, the cookies and her.
She looks sad. Then he speaks to her quietly and haltingly and a smile creeps across her well worn, beautiful face. He does not smile. His mouth is drawn down at the edges and the lines in his face are craggy and deep. He appears bitter and smaller than she somehow. Perhaps it is due to too many years of being in his chair, who knows? At any rate, he remains harsh and mean looking as she slowly unbends her aged body and with elegant, fragile fingers collects the tea things and returns them to the tray. Her fleeting moment of humor is gone and she appears as defeated as he when she returns and wheels him away.

The Seven Habits of Highly Emotional People
by Guy Wench, Ph.D.

Most of us pay close attention to our health and we treat threats to our physical well-being as soon as they occur. We dress warmly when we feel a cold coming on, we apply antibacterial ointments and bandages to cuts and scrapes, and we don’t pick at scabs as they heal. We sustain psychological injuries in life as often as we do physical ones, but we are much less proactive about protecting our psychological well-being as we are our physical well-being. Adopting the following seven habits and “treating” common psychological injuries when they occur will help protect your mental health and improve your emotional resilience.

1. Gain Control after a Failure: Failure disturbs our perceptions such that our goals seem more out of reach and our capacities seem less up to the task. Once we feel as though there is little we can do to succeed, we become demoralized and lose our motivation. Adopt the habit of ignoring this misleading “gut” reaction and make a list of the many factors related to your goal that were in your control (e.g., effort, preparation, planning, different approaches you could have taken, and others). Then considerer how you might go about improving each of these factors. Doing so will not only combat defeatist misperceptions, it will drastically improve your chances of future success.

2. Find meaning in Loss and Trauma: One of the main factors that distinguishes those who thrive emotionally after experiencing a loss or trauma from those who do not, is their ability to eventually find meaning in their pertinences and derive purpose from them. Of course, doing so takes time, as does the process of grieving and adapting to new realities. However, adopting the habit of searching for ways to recognize not just what you’ve lost, but what you’ve gained as well, will allow you to develop new appreciations for your life and the people in it, to make important changes, and to find value, meaning and purpose even if you were lacking before.

3. Disrupt the Urge to Brood and Ruminate: When we brood over distressing events we rarely gain inside into them. Instead we replay upsetting or angering scenarios in our heads, which only increases our urge to brood and makes us feel worse. Therefore, despite how compelling the urge to brood is, develop the habit of disrupting the cycle as soon as you catch yourself ruminating about the events in question. The best way to do this is to distract yourself with a task that requires concentration—such as a game of Sodoku, trying to recall the exact order of the stations on your bus/subway line, or watching an absorbing movie or show.

4. Nuture Your Self-Esteem: Our self-esteem fluctuates such that we feel better about ourselves some days than we do others. But many of us become self-critical when we are feeling bad, essentially kicking our self-esteem when it’s already down. To improve your mental health adopt the habit of regarding your self-esteem as an “emotional immune system” that needs to be nurtured back to health when it’s ailing. The best way to heal damaged self-esteem is to practice self-compassion. When you have self-critical thoughts, considerer what you would do if a dear friend had similar feelings. Write out what you would say to them in an email if you wanted to express compassion and support. Then read the email as if they had sent it to you.

5. Revive Your Self-Worth after a Rejection: Rejections are so hurtful we often try to make sense of our emotional pain by finding fault in ourselves. Our reasoning may be that if we hurt so much, we must be really weak/pathetic/ a loser/ untrustworthy/ fragile/ unlovable, etc… Rejection hurts as it does not because there is something wrong with us but because of the way our brains are wired. The best way to ease emotional pain and revive your self-worth after a rejection is to adopt the habit of affirming aspects of yourself you value or qualities you possess that you find meaningful (e.g., loyalty, compassion, creativity, or a strong work-ethic). Make a list of such attributes and choose one or two and write a short essay about why the quality is important to you.

6. Combat Lonliness by Identifying Self-Defeating Behaviors: Chronic loneliness is much more common than we realize and it has a devastating impact on our emotional and physical health. The problem is that once we feel lonely, we often act in ways to minimize the risk of further rejection by unconsciously engaging in self-defeating behaviors and sabotaging opportunities to make new social connections or to deepen existing ones. The best way to combat loneliness is to adopt the habit of identifying and challenging these self-defeating behaviors. Make a list of excuses you’ve used to avoid taking initiative in social situations (e.g., I won’t know anyone at the party so why go? They don’t call me so why should I call them? They’re probably too busy to meet up. I can’t just introduce myself to a stranger at a cocktail party). Now make a list of people whose company you have enjoyed in the past (go through your phonebook, email contacts, Facebook friends) and reach out to one or two of them each day to initiate plans until your social calendar is full. Challenge yourself to avoid using excuses about your list when you feel anxious.

7. Shed excessive Guilt by Reparing Damaged Relationships: Excessive guilt occurs when our actions or inactions have harmed another person (most often a close friend or relative) who has not forgiven us for our wrongdoing. Such situations usually have more to do with the inadequacies of our apologies than with the inability of the other person to let go of their hurt. Indeed, the crucial ingredient an effective apology requires—and the one we most often miss—is empathy. For the other person to truly forgive you, adopt the habit of conveying effective apologies when you’ve done wrong. To do so, make sure the other person feels you totally “get” how they felt as well as how they were impacted by your actions. Once you’ve expressed adequate empathy, the other person is much more likely to feel your apology is sincere and to convey authentic forgiveness. Your guilt often disappears and your relationship has the opportunity to be much more meaningful.

Gary Winch, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and the author of The Squeaky Wheel: How to protect your psychological health, improve your relationships, and enhance your self-esteem Blog

PS: I loved this article and I hope you found it helpful. Katy Steinkamp, MFT

Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

May we find PEACE On EARTH in 2017