The vent

I am not a big fan of venting. Oh, it’s fine for the dryer and the furnace. But not for my emotions. Because unlike the dryer or the furnace, where the vent carefully directs the hot air, my venting spews my hot air in places I do not want it to go, places where it generally does more harm than good.

I do acknowledge that sometimes we need to talk things out. Sometimes, we need to share our emotions, even raw ones, to sort through them and to get a handle on appropriate next steps. But simply venting, letting off steam, spewing out the bile that afflicts us, is not the same.

I grew up in a home where we were often quick to speak (and maybe slower to think about the implications of what we said). That tendency still plagues me today to the detriment of those I love the most. I do not blame my family of origin for my quickness to shoot off my mouth – it’s been 35 years since I lived at home, and I don’t observe the same behavior among my siblings. And I’ve made a lot of progress in this regard in the last decade of my life, much to the benefit of those I love the most. But I have a long way to go.

In the end, it’s a good thing for us to learn not to say everything that pops into our head.

For instance, I love my ward’s Gospel Doctrine teacher. He prepares well. He’s faithful and he leads a good discussion. But once in a while he says something I find a little goofy. (I’m sure people find some of what I say goofy when I teach, too.) I learned some time ago that the time for me to discuss my feelings about anything goofy said by my Gospel Doctrine teacher is NOT in the car on the way home from church. My lovely wife (who is as charitable as the day is long, and then some) is not interested in my complaints about the Gospel Doctrine lesson. Further, she doesn’t want me to give my teenage son any more ammunition than he can manufacture for himself to complain about his classes. (I remember the first time I heard one of my kids parrot back a complaint about one of their teachers that I made about mine. Yikes. Way to follow my example, kids.)

I have heard others offer critiques about sacrament meeting talks, firesides, directions from the bishop. At some point this “venting” is not only unpleasant, but it’s destructive.

So, what to do when something happens I don’t like? Hmm. I can think of three possibilities that are better than kvetching about it:

1. Forget about it. This is by far the best one. I need to remember that I’ll be judged by whatever judgment I use, and it would be just as well to spare myself by looking past my own complaints.

2. Pray about it. The one and only safe place to vent is to the One who already knows, namely my Father in Heaven. If I go to Him in humble prayer, He can help me to know if I need to do anything more (including, perhaps, repent of my prideful assumption that I know best). I’m reminded of Elder Uceda’s story of a father who prayed before dealing with a daughter who did not want to participate in family scripture study. What a revelation to me about the humbling power of prayer.

3. Talk about it – to the right person. If there really is something that needs discussion, then I ought to find the right person. If I have a beef with the Sunday School teacher, I can talk to him and share my point of view, and then let it go. I can share something I’ve read or another reading of a verse, but in the end, I’m not the Doctrine Police. If I’m concerned about something involving one of my kids, I can seek out the individual involved and have a gentle conversation. If I need to involve the leadership of the organization or the bishop, I can prayerfully consider that. What I don’t need to do is gossip about it to other members of my family or ward.

In Isaiah 1:18, the Lord invites us to “reason together,” and if we do that though our “sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” Motivation enough to reason with the Lord rather than complaining to anyone who is within earshot.

Stress and Control: Fight or Flight

This is another in a sporadic series on control, which started here. Other installments are here and here.

After a series of nightmares over a few days about losing control of a car I was driving (well, I was driving TWO cars at the same time, against the flow of traffic, and lost control of the one I was not in, and it flipped back on top of the car I was driving), I decided it was time to see a therapist. Waking up at 2 am every night sweating and panting was a sign to me that things were not as they should be.

The therapist I met was kind and unassuming, and he was exceptionally helpful.

We talked in my first session about my job, my family, my reaction to stress, and so on. He pretty quickly helped me sort out some scenarios for the dream in relation to specific things that were going on in my life at the time.

As we continued to meet together over the next few weeks, he helped me understand some interesting relationships within myself. Each of us has, he said, because of our evolutionary heritage, a fight or flight reflex. That reflex is typically activated by some kind of stressor, and for some of us, the fuse is short and for others the fuse is longer. But for all of us, because we no longer live among predators who will eat us if we do not fight or flee, the fight or flight response may lead to overreaction to the stressors, unless we learn to do something about it.

My way to avoid stress up to that time was also my cause of stress. If I could control everything around me, then I felt no stress. Since I could not control everything around me, stress was inevitable. And often the results of my reaction to the stress were not pretty. I was at my worst the anti-poster child for Section 121’s counsel to exercise power and influence through long-suffering, kindness and meekness. And the less control I felt I had, the more I wanted.

One of the things we worked on was the fight or flight response. His hypothesis, which seems to have been correct in my case, was that stress triggered the fight portion of that response in me, and my fuse was very, very short.

We worked on ways to lengthen my fuse, so that I would have time to plan and execute my own reaction, rather than relying on my untrustworthy (and unnecessary) instinct. What was valuable to me in the process was learning to recognize that this tendency of mine was not completely a flaw in my moral character, but rather a product of my biology (and perhaps my earlier responses to my environment). Learning to overcome it was not just a matter of willing myself to improve, but it was taking positive and specific steps to give myself time to do what I knew in my heart I wanted to do, but didn’t seem to be able to do.

We tried a few exercises, but the one that worked best for me was the catastrophe exercise. In this exercise, I spent specific time in a room alone. I thought of something that would cause me stress, and I talked myself step by step through successively more serious consequences of successively less controlled circumstances until I got to some ultimately untenable conclusion. The point was to get my heart rate up, my breathing more rapid, to increase the physical feelings of stress in the process, and then, once I articulated the most dire end-game, to take a large cleansing breath and tell myself (aloud), “And that’s ok.” And then within seconds to start again. I was to build up the time I would do the exercise – five minutes a day in the first week, then ten the next week and fifteen the third week. By the end of the third week, I could no longer get myself worked up doing the exercise. That was, my therapist told me, the point.

The exercise sensitized me to the stress so that my instinctive response did not kick in immediately; instead I would have time to plan my own response.

Generally today I’m much better than I was most of the time. I still tend to rely on the fight or flight response when I’m particularly tired or when there are multiple stressors at work at the same time.

As cheesy as it seems, Stress Management for Dummies was really helpful, as was Overcoming Anxiety for Dummies. I’m sure there are more sophisticated books on the subject, but these helped me to identify quickly some key concepts that I could work on.

The reason I share this story is not to suggest the solution that worked for me will work for everyone (thought it might), but rather to point out what I said above: my reaction to stress was more than just a moral failing. It was something that I could not simply will away by "working harder." If the gospel teaches us nothing else, it teaches that we cannot overcome this moral condition without the blessings of the atonement. Each of us is dependent upon the Savior's grace to overcome the finite nature of our existence, and to overcome sin. Similarly, we may also require the help of trained professionals to help us in our path, as well.