Going Off Script

From The Oatmeal's Why I'd Rather
Get Punched in the Testicles
Than Call Customer Service

So I got a new computer.  Joy! 

Except that there were the inevitable bobbles, for which I had to contact.... Customer Service.  <you can cue the Jaws theme music here.>

When I moved away from OCPD ex b-f in June, I switched from DSL internet connection to cable, and due to who knows why, my ISP had to assign me a new username and passcode for my new connection.  I should have written it down, but I had a lot on my mind then, and anyway, I'd picked an easy name and passcode, because I knew I would remember it...

You knew I wouldn't, right?

So I decided that, instead of calling in to my ISP helpline, and trying to verbally communicate with "Muffy" and "Jeff" and "Ashleigh," whose thick Indian accents have almost driven me to eating my own head in the past, I would try to resolve it via chat on my work 'puter during my morning break.  I got "Rocky" and "Juliet," instead.

I'm not unsympathetic to Rocky and Juliet.  (Or even Muffy and Jeff.)  They work long hours, don't earn a lot of money, and are working in an unfamiliar language.  Plus, many of the people they're trying to help are idiots.  (I might even count myself as one of those idiots.)  I'm sure I would do much worse as a Customer Service Rep if I was trying to communicate in their language.  I don't want to be nasty to Rocky & Juliet.

I just wish communications felt a little less like Rocky & Bullwinkle.

So I'm typing away, but Rocky is intent on going through the full script.  He's not listening to what I'm saying (or in this case, typing.)

ME: Hi, I have a new home computer, I need to find out my online log-in name for my cable connection, so that I can log in.

ROCKY: Congratulations on your new computer.  We can certainly help you with this.  For help with your cable connection, you will have to contact your local cable company.

ME: There's nothing wrong with my cable, it was working fine with my old computer.  I just need the username, which I forgot, so that I can get online with the new computer.

ROCKY: Are you chatting from your new computer?

ME <taking a deep breath>: NO, I can't get online from my new computer.  I need the username which logs me onto the cable connection.

ROCKY: Let me direct you to the site which gives you the steps to get online.

ME: Thank you, see that first step?  Login with your username.  You guys set me up with a new username in June, but I don't remember what it is.  I just need the username for the account, and possibly a password reset.

ROCKY: Are you online from your new computer now?

ME: No, I CAN'T GET ONLINE FROM MY NEW COMPUTER.  Look, just give me the CS to call, I'll call later from home.  (Meanwhile, I have scrolled through My Account and finally located the mystery username - it's my usual username, plus the number 1.  Genius!)

I get off chat with Rocky, try fruitlessly to log in or reset the passcodes myself to that username e-mail account, and eventually "Juliet" does a passcode reset for me.  When I get home later that evening, voila!  All better.

But this reminded me soooo much of a discussion on one of my "boards" about those with OCPD and their scripts.  Sometimes it feels like we are trying to have a discussion, and the other person isn't so much listening and responding to us, but stuck in a groove.  Like they're onstage, and are trying to feed us a cue.  And they're going to keep tossing it to us, regardless of what we say back to them. 

Which leads to fights and bad feelings all around.

Some OCPDrs themselves have described this seeking for the "right" answer, the right response.  They may not know exactly what they wanted to hear back, but they knew they weren't getting it, so they felt obligated to press on, until they heard - whatever it was - that they needed to hear.  This was unlikely, depending on how long the interaction had gone on, to be a true reflection of their partner's feeling or thoughts, but it was the right answer.

Here's what one frustrated partner joked:

I have told my DW rather than having a pointless discussion she should prepare a script in advance. She'd give me a copy. She'd read her lines. I'd read my lines. I'd know when I'm allowed to speak and when I'm not. She'd hear exactly what she wants to hear. We could even use the same scripts over and over. I'd know when it was going to end. We could both be happy.

Has this ever happened to you?

Frequently, I would begin speaking. DW would anticipate that I was about to say X. She would cut me off and start responding to X. I would tell her I was not going to say X; I was going to say Y. She would then insist that I was lying. We would then get into a ridiculous argument about what I would have said had she not interrupted.

I have been there, done that.  And <hanging my head in shame> have done my share of interrupting others as well, though I've never gotten into arguments about what somebody else would have said.

Maybe we need to take a bit of advice from Patsy.


So how does one deal with someone who won't "Stop, look and listen"?

One tactic is to walk away and start ignoring the person.  They'll ask why.  Answer: "It seemed you were not interested in a conversation, but a monologue.  Since my participation is not required, I thought I'd keep myself occupied while you finished up."  (It's important if you take this approach, to keep your tone neutral and pleasant - no heavy sarcasm in your tone, please.)

Another is to yell at them to Quit Interrupting!

Another is to simply not answer at all, unless asked why.  Then give the same answer (my participation seemed unnecessary.)

You can buy your own sock monkey puppet at
Colonial Candle

I thought about trying a sock puppet, myself.  Talk to the monkey!

Theoretically, you could talk to the Rambler during a moment of lucidity, like I did, and say, "You know, sometimes one of us might be talking, maybe when we've had a bit too much to drink, or are really excited about something, and we kind of talk right over the other person, and don't listen very well.  How about we agree on a signal so the other person realizes they're doing it?  A code word, holding up a hand or something...?" 

I thought, by making it neutral, by saying this is something we both do, something we both should be allowed to halt, that he would agree.  And he did.

Agree, that is.

In practice... it didn't work so well.  Often his mouth was like the Aerosmith song, "Train keep a-rollin', all night long."  But not in a good way.

I don't think there is any one approach that will work with everyone, all the time, because we are all individuals, and so are the people who, uhmmm, have their scripts.

For myself, I'm going to try to work on the bad habit of interrupting others in my own conversations.  To be aware that if what I have to say is that important, the opportunity to say it will arise again, and if it doesn't... maybe what I had to say wasn't that important, after all.

To realize that every moment does not have to be filled with noise, to babble words just for the sake of filling the empty pauses.  Silences are meaningful, and often, beautiful and essential parts of listening.

To breathe more.  To smile more.  To hold up a hand or walk away if others interrupt me.

What are you going to do to improve the quality of your conversations?

Leave a comment, below.

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chapter Two - Self Control & Thinking in Extremes



from aWorldTourer at Flickr
Do you ruminate like a cow?

 This post continues with Self-Control & Thinking in Extremes, from Chapter Two.

This series will look at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

Too Perfect, When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.

Self discipline is the mark of maturity, is it not?  We all admire the person who eats and drinks in moderation; who works at maintaining a fit, well-conditioned body; who is even-tempered; who manages to persevere even at difficult, unsupervised tasks.  But in their unconscious quest for absolute self-control, many obsessives carry such solid virtues to self-destructive extremes.

As I think back to my own days in medical school, I remember students who would not only study long hours but would deny themselves even the most legitimate breaks for eating, exercising, talking with other students, or entertainment.  Would reasonable breaks really have caused a dip in their grade-point averages?  Wouldn't an occasional Saturday off have improved the quality of their lives and their personal growth?  The answers are obvious, but there was no way you could have convinced these people.  They were deft at rationalizing their behavior (e.g., "I'm no genius - I need more study time."). 

I call these reason rationalizations because, while they may have been true, there was another, deeper and more powerful force driving these students to such extremes.  Though they probably weren't conscious of it, many feared that if they let their self-control slip just once, they might have less of it the next time, and still less thereafter.  They feared they would ultimately lose their hard-won diligence completely and become paralyzed or helpless, unable to accomplish anything.  Of course this "thinking" goes on somewhere below the surface, where it doesn't have the benefit of scrutiny, analysis, and revision. 

When obsessives lapse while dieting or trying to quit smoking or drinking, they may have trouble moving beyond their lapse and refocusing on the goal.  Instead they're apt to feel distraught over the transgression, and to dwell on it.  And why?  Not because they seriously think that one slip will make them fat, sick or drunk, but rather because they lost control.  They failed to make themselves do what they decided to do, and if such a slip occurred once, who knows where it could lead?

THINKING IN EXTREMES

These examples point up an important characteristic of many obsessives: they tendency to think in extremes.  To yield to another person, for example, may be felt as a humiliating total capitulation.  Similarly, to tell one lie, break one appointment, tolerate a spouse's criticism just once, or shed a single tear is to set a frightening precedent.  One patient told me she couldn't miss a single workout because it make her feel she couldn't trust herself, and that frightened her.

This all-or-nothing thinking occurs partly because obsessives rarely lie in the present.  They think in terms of trends stretching into the future.  No action is an isolated event; each is merely a part of something bigger, so every false step has major ramifications.

Such distorted thinking can cause a host of problems.  I've know obsessives, for instance, who had trouble relaxing and enjoying first dates because they were so preoccupied with the possible remote consequences of such occasions.  ("Would I want to marry this person?")  In all-or-nothing thinking, one's perspective is badly distorted; there's a failure to step back and remind oneself that going out with someone doesn't commit one to any long-term romance.

Another consequence of such thinking is that it aggravates the pain of worry and rumination.  Obsessives tend to envision the worst possible outcome of a scenario and then worry as if such a scenario had in fact come to pass.  Or they will mentally magnify small personal gaffes into something far more serious,  Some of my patients have had trouble sleeping after briefly losing their composure in a therapy group, assuming that others had judged this "emotional lapse" as harshly as they themselves did.

***

Actually despite the song title being "All Er Nuthin'" it's a pretty good look at a couple setting boundaries with each other.  Will Parker won't marry Ado Annie if she continues her, eh, triflin' ways, and she won't have him out cattin' on the town, either.

All-or-nothing thinking - boy, am I familiar with that one!  Ex-boyfriend drove himself harder than anyone else ever would.  When he was dieting (which was most of the time, since he was convinced he was getting fat,) he would skip meals and of course, since I had my own weight and diet issues, he'd accuse me of "lack of control" because in fact I did want to eat more than once daily.  The nausea and headaches I suffered when I went too long between meals were not physical, in his opinion, but because of my lack of discipline.  He thought very highly of his own "self-control" and I'm sure this was anorective thinking, the idea that "I'm in control, I can conquer my hunger," along with disdain for weak-willed sisters like myself who wanted... moderate amounts of food at reasonable intervals.

If I had a dollar for every time he said "pigging out," "heifer," "slim" (with a sneer in his voice), "wide load," or "are you eating again?" kinds of comments, even when I was slim... I could probably pay my rent for a year.  I'm having to work very hard now to silence that voice inside my head, as I work on learning mindful eating.

Another all-or-nothing thing - we couldn't "do" more than one thing in a day.  For example, if we had a family party to attend in the late afternoon, the whole day had to be set aside for showering and grooming for the party.  He could not get his arms around the idea that we could, perhaps, clean the garage or wash windows until 11:00, then still have plenty of time to shower and get ready for a 5:00 party a 30 minutes drive away.  Nope, all or nothing.  Either a day was totally committed to household chores, or it was committed to social activities.  (And then usually the next day had to be spent in emotional recovery from the strain of said social event.)

I've heard a lot of stories about those with OCPD terrified to date, because there are expectations.  What if you're on a date with someone and don't like them?  From what I've heard, it's totally carried out in their minds to being trapped for 12 years in an unhappy marriage.  Or someone who is desperately in need of a job, but is afraid to send out a resume to X company because they're not absolutely sure they want to work for the company, because what if it's a really crappy place to work?  Hello, they haven't even asked you to come for an interview, let alone made a job offer!  All or nothing, distorted thinking, folks.

Katie from Health for the Whole Self posted about Ten Cognitive Distortions adapted from The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns (which will be reviewed on this blog, in the not-so-near future.  Gotta get through Too Perfect, first!)  While her adaptations apply specifically to those grappling with eating disorders, a great exercise would be to apply and adapt them to whatever one's "thing" or biggest weakness is, whether it's body-image, dating, job anxieties...

And ruminating...  ex b-f would chew over some negative thing, over and over and over again.  Not in a positive way, as in, "Let's unpack this, see why it happened, and take steps to try and prevent it in the future," but in a way that usually got him as angry and upset, sometimes even more so, than when whatever unpleasant event first occurred.  I believe that in some cases, as he retold himself the story over and over again, that he embellished details in his mind that made it worse or more painful every time.

In his case, he usually latched onto some awful thing that he believed someone had done to him.

Others chew over wrongs they believe they have done to others, and work themselves into feeling terribly guilty.  Katie had a recent blog post where she believed she'd said something offensive and was having trouble letting it go, until her husband told her to stop being a cow (he meant this with love.)

This is one I tended to do, myself, though as I get older, I'm realizing that... sorry, Ego!  What I say is usually not the most important thing on somebody's else's mind.  So, even if I'm more than usually tactless, I haven't ruined their day or life (unless they're OCPD, in which case, no matter how much care and tact I exercised, I might have said the "wrong" thing anyway.)

Got a self-control or thinking in extremes story?

Your thoughts?

Death of an Assclown

In case you're wondering, assclown is a marvelous word coined by the marvelous Natalie Lue who writes Baggage Reclaim.  Because calling a certain type of man a "player" or a "ladies' man" or a "Don Juan" is giving a sleazeball entirely too much undeserved respect and dignity.


Photo by :mrMark: at Flickr
(just a regular, not an AssClown)

"You know he’s an assclown when he liberally presses The Reset Button – He possesses a ‘special’ ability to reset the relationship to whatever point that he feels most comfortable with, which is effectively like erasing the past. This is how he breezes his way back into various exes lives, disappearing for long enough and then bamboozling his way back in and trying to force out the memory of his misdemeanours. You’ll either remember them but be so fricking relieved to have him back and feel like you’ve ‘won’ that you go along with his ‘brainwash’ or you’ll try to reason with him and explain your point of view about past events and he reacts negatively, effectively teaching you (see below with passive aggression) that if you ‘remember’, he’ll be offski or difficult to deal with." (from "How to Spot An Assclown")

So, I have this cousin who belongs in the Assclown Hall of Fame.

Well, had this cousin.  Because I just got the news he died of cancer, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Cancer is an ugly way to die for anybody.  I've been given to understand that Cousin D had reconciled with his estranged children, and had actually remarried Wife #1 (more on that, below) last February.  My aunt, his mother, is understandably grieving, as any mother would.

I did not hear if his two brothers or his sister, my cousins, are planning to attend the funeral, or if they were even on speaking terms in recent years.

Photo by NickPiggott at Flickr

So why is Cousin D an assclown?  Marriage #1 - I'm slightly unclear on the details, whether his wife was still pregnant with offspring #3, or whether offspring #3 was an infant.  What I do know, according to family legend, is Cousin D went out one day to pick up some milk for the family... and never came home.  Dead?  Wandering somewhere with amnesia?  Abducted by aliens?

Nope, as his worried family found out some years later, Cousin D was perfectly safe and healthy.  He had to get back in touch in order to get a divorce from Wife #1, in order to marry Wife #2, with whom he'd run away while playing milkman.

At such time, Aunt and Uncle were relieved to find their Baby Boy was alive... Wife #1 was, understandably, more than a trifle miffed; his offspring were angry (and hurt,) and his brothers, Cousins A & B were furious.  Declared Cousin D a total assclown, and demanded Aunt & Uncle choose whether to have contact with them, or with dishonorable Cousin D.  His sister, Cousin C, played neutral party as much as possible.

Eventually, for whatever reason, Cousin D's marriage #2 did not work out (could it have been him?)  But he married again, a lovely woman with two children of her own.  I met them all, briefly, when he brought them to our old hometown for a semi-family reunion.  Cousins A & B did not attend, but Cousin D's oldest son came to the house and everybody made nice.

Cut to: several years later.  Cousin D abandons Wife #3, but this time, no divorce, because, Surprise!  He's still married to Wife #2, he was never legally married to Wife #3 at all.  (See why he belongs in the Assclown Hall of Fame?)  Why they didn't put him in jail as a bigamist, I truly don't know.

Now, this guy was my cousin by blood, but we'd never been emotionally close.  He was about 15 years older than me, and we probably never exchanged more than 100 words during our entire lives. 

Apparently he exerted some magical, seductive power over women which I never saw, because despite the absolutely abominable way he treated her, Not-Quite-Wife #3 continued to pine after him for quite some time, asking me and others in the family how he was doing, if we could explain his thought processes (uh, no!) and so on. 


Photo from Willy D on Flickr


We're still FaceBook friends, and I wonder how she's taking the news, which my oldest sis, who'd gotten The Call from our Aunt, thus had all the info, was planning to break to her over the phone.  Sis and I agreed that, legal wife or not, #3 deserved to be informed, via an old-fashioned phone call.  Having lived as his wife for 10+ years, sending her a message on FB seemed... wrong.

And, as mentioned above, he and Wife #1 remarried last year (presumably after he did secure a legal divorce from Wife #2)

The mind boggles, truly it does.  I don't get it, why Cousin D (he wasn't bad looking, but he was no George Clooney)  had all these women ready to lay their lives at his feet, how he could treat them all so horribly and still sleep at night. 

I don't get them.  As badly as he behaved, as much as he cheated and lied and they watched him screw other women over, Cousin D's wives could still accept it and tell themselves, "Yes, but he's different with me," or, "It's different this time, he's changed."

And then, I look back at so many of my own romantic relationships, including the last one, and realize I've done the same kind of thing, accepted the intolerable, made excuses, told myself a man wouldn't treat me the way he treated the other women in his past. Or that he wouldn't treat me again the way he just had.  I, too, was a Queen of Doublethink and Denial.  <rolling my eyes and sighing at my younger self.>

Hopefully, this time I've changed.

And I don't get how I'm supposed to feel about Cousin D's death.  I'm kind of sad for those who loved him, I guess.  I know that in his later years, Cousin D did do quite a bit for his elderly parents, especially caring for his mother after his father died.  I know that cancer is a cruel beast (don't know what kind he had, but none of them are pretty) and the suffering he must have gone through may have been a bit of karmic payback.

And, if his children and (some of) his wives can forgive him, who am I to hold a grudge on their behalf?

Still, there's a piece of me that simply isn't sorry at all he's dead.  That thinks the planet would be a much better place if all Assclowns were gone from it, like, yesterday. 

Have you ever experienced a death, either of a former lover or family member, that left you with very mixed feelings?  Please click a Reaction or share in the comments (as much as you feel comfortable doing.)