In the 1970s I conducted free group therapy for Vietnam vets who were having difficulty adjusting back home. Civilian therapists volunteered to do this for those vets who were so alienated and distrusting of the government that they could not accept the help of the VA. Along with other psychologists, I met weekly with vets in a community center for five years. Much of the work focused on helping them remember to stay in the present moment rather than being controlled by their very painful memories or their unpleasant fears of the future.

A very small number had been assassins in the war. These were the best-of-the-best, so to speak, who had been sent alone behind enemy lines to find and assassinate enemy leaders. If set off, they could kill before you had any chance to defend yourself or before they could control themselves. We therapists knew this; the vets knew this.

One evening the hall outside my room suddenly filled with running feet and anxious shouting. The psychologist for the other group burst into my room of vets. Other vets were trying to find a phone to call the police.

One of the former assassins had lost emotional control. His threatening rants and wall pounding were heard everywhere.

I was the senior psychologist and looked to for leadership. At the request of the other psychologist, I took a breath, consciously told myself to be where my feet were and walked alone into the room with the distraught man.

This vet was 6-4 and weighed about 240. I was 5-11 ½ and weighed about 155. He was trained as a killer. I was a physically unskilled suburban kid. He was in the back corner of the room still yelling and threatening to kill us all as he looked straight at me.

I took a couple of quick steps into the room but to the side of the door, leaving plenty of space for him to see that I was not trying to corner or threaten him and yet staying a lot closer to the door than he was so that I had some slim chance to get out first.

If I had attended only to his threats and gesturing toward me or if I would have fled as the others in his group had done, I am convinced that he would have lost the little remaining physical control he had and ended up really hurting someone. If I had responded only to my fear in that moment or to the images in my head, I could not have been of any help. I assumed a sort of a military at rest position and spoke in a somewhat loud but calm, factual voice telling him that it must feel unfair that he had done his job in the war and then was rejected for doing his job, a common theme among vets. He continued to yell and threaten and pound the wall, but he stopped the gestured movements toward me. I continued saying that it must hurt terribly to be a patriot protecting our country and then being attacked back home. In about five very long minutes of me maintaining control of myself and yet communicating my empathetic awareness of his hurt and pain, he was slumped over in a chair in the back corner sobbing in the painful experience of his feelings of rejection.

Police arrived but the other psychologist and vets convinced them that we were all OK and that we did not need them. Fortunately this vet never saw the police that night.

My intended point in this story is that me remembering the present moment and being intensely aware of what was happening now made it possible to have a healing experience rather than another hurtful experience. If I would have responded to the images in my head of potential harm rather than me remembering the present, marginal control he was showing, I believe that would have been the final straw that pushed him beyond any control.

A key tool for decreasing our anxiety and fear is learning to remember what is so in the present moment rather than getting caught up in our imaginings about the future or our memories of the past. Being where your feet are in the present moment reduces both anxiety and fear.

A word of common sense: Remembering the present does not refer to blindly trusting that no harm can come to your body. These bodies are relatively fragile and can be torn apart or squashed into lifelessness. Remembering the present is about being fully aware of what is happening in this moment and responding to that. For example, if you are about to be run over by a speeding train, jump off the track! Do not stand there and try to speak to the train in a “somewhat loud but calm, factual voice”. Always use common sense in whatever you do. Be normal and not weird.

I will be publishing more on Remembering the Present in the coming months. I invite you to sign up for the RSS feed for my blog to be notified when these posts are made. You can do that by clicking on the orange icon in the upper right hand corner of this webpage.

Also, please give a gift to your family and friends and share what you have learned with them.

Again, I thank you for reading and I wish you good luck with your… remembering the Present…a better way.

There are ways that we can be out of touch with reality that have been officially identified by psychologists and psychiatrists.  Schizophrenia and paranoia are just two examples of such official craziness.   Please note this topic is not about such official craziness.  It is about unofficial craziness, a phase I have used for over 25 years now.

With unofficial craziness, others may not think it is unusual or strange, and may not even try to get us help because they do not see us as being sick, even though we are responding to things that do not exist and we are actually out-of-touch-with-reality crazy.

Here is an example.  Several years ago, a few days before a scheduled business flight, I developed a chest cold and stuffy nose.  My doctor did a routine chest x-ray to be sure I did not have pneumonia before I took off on the trip.  The x-ray turned out to show an unusual spot on my right lung.  A follow up CAT scan was ordered for the next day.

When on the next day I was informed by the technician that the CAT scan confirmed the mass in my lung, my anxiety went through the roof.  As I drove home, I kept seeing the concerned look on that technician’s face.  My doctor called and referred me to a thoracic surgeon, but I could not see him for a week.

Instantly I could “see” this tumor in my lung.  I saw my chest cut open in surgery.  The pain was terrible.

I suffered that whole week with difficulty concentrating, nightmares, daytime cold sweats and terrible chest pains.  Family and friends offered me sympathy and understanding.

When I finally did see the surgeon, he listened to my chest and ordered another x-ray.  I had to wait for that x-ray to be developed.  During this waiting time, I even imagined how I would look when I would enter this waiting room again after my surgery, if I was lucky enough to survive the surgery, my surgery.

The nurse finally directed me to the surgeon’s office where he was holding the new x-ray in his hand.  My heart sank.

Calmly he said, “Well, I think it will all be cleared up in a week or so.”

I said, “What? Can I really recover from surgery that quickly?”

Surprised, the surgeon asked, “What are you talking about, Paul?”

I paused and then sheepishly asked, “What did you just say?”

He repeated, “I think it will all be cleared up in about a week or so.”

Now somewhat confused I asked, “What will be cleared up in about a week?”

He patiently explained, “The mucus from your sinuses collected in your lung and gave the appearance of a tumor.  The mucus is almost gone now and should be completely cleared up in another week or so.”

This time I heard what he said.  Instantly my chest stopped hurting.  The room even became brighter.  My imaginary blood and scars from my imaginary surgery disappeared in a flash.

And for my longest ten days ever, I was unofficially crazy.  I was suffering from something that did not exist and that never would happen … as if it had already happened.  No other spots have ever been found on my lungs.

The nature of unofficial craziness and what tends to keep it hanging around is that others often do not see it as being crazy and out of touch with reality at all.  But I will tell you during those ten days I was just as out of touch with reality and just as crazy as any person who has been given an official diagnosis and hospitalized in a locked ward for treatment of a serious mental illness.

Usually such unofficial craziness passes in time and is forgotten.  However the underlying dysfunctional processes and the beliefs that produced the craziness continue to be present in the background.  This unofficial craziness raises its ugly head again and again through out our lives.  It is the cause of the vast majority of needless suffering of human beings.

And, anyone can suffer from unofficial craziness.  I have seen it in mental health professionals, in family and friends, in judges, doctors, powerful business executives, television stars and ministers.  No one is exempt because of the common design of our minds that allows this to happen.  Every human being is subject to experiencing the suffering that can be caused by unofficial craziness.

Now what is the antidote to this self induced suffering? This will be discussed more fully in future topics, but basically the antidote is to learn to be where your feet are in the moment rather than stuck in the fantasy in your head and suffering as if that fantasy were reality, as I was doing with my lung tumor. That is, be present now, to what is real now. When you can do this, you will find it is the best form of stress management there is.

Sometimes this is much easier said than done, but all of us can learn to react in a better way. Psychotherapy is sometimes needed to reduce the anxiety created by unofficial craziness before we can then let it go and get on about out lives. Cognitive behavioral therapy can be especially helpful.

I will be publishing more on Unofficial Craziness in the coming months because it is such an important topic.  I invite you to sign up for the RSS feed for my blog to be notified when these posts are made.  You can do this by clicking on the orange icon at the top right corner of this blog.

Also, please give a gift to your family and friends and share what you have learned with them.

Again, I thank you for reading and I wish you good luck with your…  Recovering from Unofficial Craziness…a better way.

“If I don’t turn back, I should get to some place new for me.”

Hooray! This week I have finally succeeded in getting a basic presence on the internet. It has taken me many, many hours over many months to accomplish this. I was surprised time and again along the way by how many different things I had to learn, from web design to video editing, and how long it took me. One small example is that I had to read sections in three books plus several online articles to even come close to understanding how to do a “trackback” in blogging. If it is true that learning new things keeps your brain in good health longer, then mine should be going for a very long time.

I have my website www.drpaulmalone.com functional. It has three articles so far. The links are all working, including the links to take a visitor to my virtual office and to my blog.

As you know from reading this, I have four posts on my blog www.drpaulmalone.com/blog.

I have a Virtual Office for ultra secure online therapy and coaching. I can now provide email therapy/coaching, chat therapy/coaching, telephone therapy/coaching and video conferencing therapy/coaching.

This week, I published my first EzineArticle on Worry, based on one of the articles also available on my website.

This week, I have published my first YouTube video related to psychology.

There are many additional things that I need to do as well as tweaking of what I have already done, but I feel great about establishing a foothold. Hello World!

I was a heavy smoker of cigarettes for many years. I finally quit about 18 years ago after several hundred failed attempts over about eight years. Recalling some of my experiences today makes me laugh in amazement at my own struggle.

I am a clinical psychologist and prior to successfully quitting smoking I helped start a pain control and biofeedback clinic based in a medical school. One of the factors that correlates with difficulty in achieving pain relief is the use of tobacco, and nicotine addiction is one of the hardest addictions to overcome. I developed some procedures for helping patients in the clinic to quit smoking. Since I was trained as a hypnotist for smoking cessation, one of the main techniques I used was my own form of hypnosis with small groups of patients. I did this for the patients even though I was still a heavy smoker myself and was not ready to quit at that time. Smoking was not yet the socially unacceptable behavior it is today and some TV personalities still smoked openly while on the air.

When I use hypnosis I concentrate my attention on the reactions of each individual in the group and tailor my suggestions to address what I see happening in the moment with each individual. This takes a lot of energy and intense focus on each group member and leaves virtually no time to monitor what is happening to me.

Some of my hypnotic suggestions encourage the individual to recall the very first times they tried to smoke and the sensations they experienced. I remind the group of the choking, the dizziness, the tingling, the nausea, the headache and so forth that happens with all of us the first time we deeply inhale cigarette smoke. The fact is these same unpleasant sensations happen to us each and every time we have a cigarette no matter how many years we smoke or how much we may enjoy smoking. We learn to block out unconsciously all this unpleasantness in order to continue our habit, both the physical addiction and the psychological dependence. It can be helpful to stop smoking if we undo the blocking of these unpleasant sensations and again become conscious of them. This is part of what my hypnotic suggestions are designed to achieve. Hypnosis can be a powerful tool for achieving this and I was very successful with the many patient groups I conducted at the medical school.

The personal problem for me occurred when I got in my car to drive over to my private practice office after a group hypnosis session at the clinic. I was still not ready to quit smoking. I wanted a cigarette and readily gave in to my urge. What is funny to me now is that when I lit up that first cigarette after a hypnosis session I again experienced the choking and coughing, the tingling and headache and so forth that I had just suggested that the group members allow themselves to re-experience as if they were inhaling their first cigarette. The hypnosis had unintentionally worked on me … again. I inhaled, smoke filled my lungs and the nicotine rushed through my system. I had to fight through all the unpleasantness to keep smoking, just like I did with my very first cigarette to become one-of-the-guys as a teenager. The unpleasantness typically did not go away until the second or third cigarette. The sadness is that repeatedly I consciously persevered so that I could reinstate my unconscious blocking of the unpleasant sensations and resume feeding my overpowering addiction. As I said, nicotine addiction is one of the most difficult addictions to overcome.

I eventually did succeed and consider it one of my major achievements in life.  I do not have urges to smoke.  I am fortunate in that it also does not bother me to be around people who still smoke.  I have never been critical of those who continue to smoke, although they do get my unspoken, understanding sympathy.

If you want to quit smoking, keep finding different ways to try to quit until you find what works for you.  There is no one solution that will work for everyone.  Help can come from the most unexpected sources.  The newer medications that are available today combined with behavioral therapy appear to be the most successful treatments.

What eventually worked for me was the combination of hypnosis, nicotine chewing gum and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques.  And, the last straw that finally pulled it all together and enabled me to quit was the addition of a simple little question I imagined asking myself in the future each time I had an urge to smoke:  “What did you do when the urge came up?”

Please give a gift to your family and friends and share what you have learned with them.

If you find this information useful, you can find additional information on my website www. drpaulmalone.com

Thank you for reading this article.  I wish you good luck with your Overcoming Addictions…a better way.

I am sorry you lost your paintings (”Kansas” and “Lady Leaping into the light”) that were on display there.

What is worry?

Worry is mental distress or agitation resulting from concern, usually concern about something in the future.  It is that needless, almost endless, annoying rumination about potential negative events.  Worry is not analyzing or planning or problem solving, all of which have a goal and an end to the process.

Worry, for example, is ruminating about all the negative things that could happen if another economic depression occurred.  You think about all the bad things that might happen to you and your family, and then you go back through them again and again and again. You tell yourself that you might lose your job and you feel fear, but you do not plan for what you would need to do to find another job, like updating your resume, polishing your interviewing skills, and searching for available jobs now.

You might imagine being forced out of your home and living in your car and how terrible that would feel,   but you do not make a list of the  essentials you would need to survive in your car, things like blankets in the winter or a battery operated fan in the summer or restroom and bathing arrangements.

And, after you go through all the potential bad things in your head, you then go back through them again and add new thoughts that did not occur to you the last time.

There is no end to this ruminating… it just goes on and on, until the actual event occurs or until something else distracts you or you fall asleep from exhaustion.

There is usually no specific goal for worry, no sense of what you are trying to accomplish by worrying.  Analyzing, planning, and problem solving all have goals and clear steps to take, and because of this professionals can help you learn to analyze or plan or problem solve more efficiently.

Many people have probably told you, “Don’t worry.”  Or they might tell you to do something useful while you worry.   They do not tell you about a better way to worry probably because they have not thought about the purpose or the potential value of worry.

What is the purpose of worry?

The purpose of worry is to keep your mind occupied while you let time pass.  That is, worry helps you pass the time when you cannot think of anything more useful to do.  It is sort of like channel surfing horror movies on TV when you cannot think of anything better to do to occupy your mind as you wait for time to pass.

Worry does not make anything happen.  Worry does not keep anything from happening.   It does not make things better or worse.  Worry does not do anything but act as an annoying distraction that can keep your mind busy while time passes.

If worry has no natural end and has no purpose other than passing time, then why worry?

Hint: the answer is in the question.  The answer is when you have to wait on something to happen, something that has many possible endings and some of which are potentially bad, then use worry as a way to keep your mind occupied to help pass the time until you can think of something more useful to do.

Worrying can be a great distraction that exercises your mind and uses up excess energy while you wait, at least until you think of something more useful to do.

What is a better way to worry?

A better way to worry is to recognize and accept worry for what it is with awareness, that is, be fully conscious of what you are doing while you are worrying.  Use it deliberately the same way you might use channel surfing; use it with purpose as a deliberate distraction to occupy your mind while you wait.

Do not use it to try to make something happen or to stop something from happening.  That does not work.

This advice is not about trying to find something more useful to do while you worry; it is about worrying in a better way that is less stressful and less harmful to your body and mind.

Again, a better way to worry is to recognize and accept worry for what it is with awareness, that is, be fully conscious of what you are doing while you are worrying … to pass the time.

Please give a gift to your family and friends and share what you have learned with them.

Thank you for reading this article.  I wish you good luck with your Worrying…a better way.

If you find this information useful, you can find additional information on my website www.drpaulmalone.com.