MAKE IT HAPPEN SOONER RATHER THAN LATER!!!

I have decided to write a second edition of my book called, --- The Human Mind, only this time I will call it, --- Understanding Human Behavior.

As well as many or most of the ideas contained in the original book, I will be adding more ideas which are intended to prove conclusively that the ideas contained in the first edition, under a different name, are nevertheless, just as relevent as they originally were.

I failed to realize that the inclusion of my previous job as a taxi-driver would leave everyone with the impression that this character is putting forth a pipe-dream that defies reality; when in effect, it actually puts forward a deeper level of truth concerning the manner in which the human mind functions.

I will be including, among other items, the breakdown of the movie called, --- The King's Speech, which will prove once and for all that my theory about distorted and conglomerated fears is the real cause of stammering or stuttering [these last two words are actually synonyms].

On an even more important level, it will show that the above two problems concerning our reactions to fear, not only cause stuttering but can also be used to show why people do the things that they do.

A new world is waiting for the human race to catch up to it.   This book will help make that time shorter.  What more can any one man do --- than that.   

STUTTERING IS NOT A GENETIC DISORDER

Hello:

On May 20,2015 in the Toronto Globe and Mail, in the Life & Arts section on Page L7 an article entitled, --- [Research to shed light on stuttering causes, treatments.] appears.

Unfortunately the article concludes that there is a genetic component to this speech impediment.  The real cause is fear.   Each word that we utter requires a decision on our part and it is the fear of making this decision that causes the stuttering.

Many times the reasons are almost self-evident and the cure is relatively simple but other times it is very complex and it is entirely reasonable that a genetic factor should be looked upon as the cause when other reasons escape us.

A simple cause occurs when a child comes home from playing with his peers and uses the word --- fuck --- and is slapped in the face for using such a vulgar expression.   This happened far more often in the past then it does now-a-days.

Our  permissive society has caused many other problems but it has helped to reduce the incidence of stuttering in many parts of the world.   One way to know that this is happening is if the child begins to stutter when trying to say the words fun, full, furious etc.   

That is, --- any word that begins with the letters fu, because the child becomes afraid that he or she will use the profane word and be slapped again for his or her mistake.  It can even start when he tries to say any word that begins with the letter --- F.

Another problem as the child becomes older is the knowledge that when you are speaking to a group of people you are exposing your brain to the scrutiny of your listeners and this stress can also lead to stuttering.   On a minor scale but still damaging for the speakers emotional health is the nervous speaker who is shaking as they speak.

Obviously there are many reasons to develop a stutter and Josh's problem appears to be rather deeply engrained.   Obviously he is capable of long periods of fluid speech and this fact should indicate that it is not a genetic problem.   If it was it should be happening most of the time or even all of the time, --- but not so infrequently.

So it becomes necessary to determine what stresses and how much of them are responsible for his stuttering.  Keep in mind that the young boy may not be willing, or able to tell you why he stutters.

But a capable investigator can deduce clues from when he stutters and when it started to find the reasons for the stuttering and try to overcome them for the child so afflicted.

The idea that this problem has a genetic component is easily understood when one realizes that we have failed to understand that irrational and distorted reactions to fear can affect the human mind so completely.

   

BE A SEEKER NOT A HIDER

Hello:

A few days ago in one of the local papers a guy had at least 3 women on the go with his "open" marriage.   One of which was the real thing with one or two children.  One of the "other" women wanted to know if she should continue with this situation. 

Here is my answer.

Obviously you do not have a very high opinion of yourself to ask such a question.  Why not try this.  Since he is lying to you about his real intentions, [to obtain as much sex as possible with the least amount of commitment to as many women as possible], tell him that you have two other lovers and see what his reaction is.   Or tell him that you would like to become a Mother and see if he suddenly distances himself from you.   

Rather than waste time with the above two suggestions, I would be more inclined to dump the guy as soon as possible.   When it comes to finding a new man, some of them are more fragile than you might think and they have a tough time with rejection.   

Hold your head up high and find someone who you think would make a good partner and if he seems reluctant to show any interest, step up to the plate yourself and show him that you are interested in him.  If that scenario fails, --- move on to the next best choice until you do succeed.

For those men who have a high level of fear about being rejected, such bold action on your part might be just what is needed to break the ice.   You are much better than you have been giving yourself credit for.  Good luck and do your best to remember this simple fact.  There are too many hiders in this world and not enough seekers.   

CHRISTIAN ETHCIS

Hello:

This paraphrased letter was taken from the Ask Amy column in the Toronto Sun newspaper on Aug. 29/2015.

From Ask Amy:

My husband’s brother and his wife are devout Christians.  Some time ago they asked us if we would allow their daughter to live with us because she was having problems in her home town.   We cheerfully agreed.

At dinner one day I mentioned that I was less than impressed with the church that this girl’s parents attended.   I said that their church was very over-bearing.   Among other things, they have down-sized their home so that they could give more money to their church.

The daughter reported this conversation to her parents and her father informed us that we would be persona non grata unless we apologized for making such a negative comment about their church.

My response

Too bad you did not determine what problems the girl was having in her home town.   If the father’s arrogance is wide-spread and copied by his daughter, perhaps her insistence that others in town abide by her rules for living was the real cause of her problems.

It appears to me that the only way you can have a happy or friendly relationship with your husband’s brother is to allow him to dictate what you think and what decisions you make in your life.   End  this type of behavior by your brother-in-law now, --- rather than later. 

Hopefully your husband will agree with the contents of the letter that I am suggesting that you send to your husband’s brother.  Indeed there might be extenuating circumstances that would indicate that the letter should be toned down slightly, but this is too important to let it slide.   Here is the letter:

Dear Brother-in-Law:

Please accept my apology for telling you the truth.   I also apologize for not seeing through your superficial Christian ethics.   Since we will not cow-tow to your version of Christian behavior, perhaps it would be best if you picked up your daughter from our home as soon as possible.

If that means that you have to tell your church that you must cut back on the amount that you tithe, --- so be it.   If  you wish to apologize to me for your uncalled for behavior then we might still be able to continue to be civil to each other.   

If not, then it will become necessary for us to have no further contact with you or your family in the future.   I hope my version of --- "the truth" --- will not upset your delicate sensibilities.

                                            Your sister-in-law,

 

DISTORRED FEARS CAN CAUSE THOSE FEARS TO COME TRUE.

Hello:

From the "Life" section of the Toronto Star on April 25, 2015; a [condensed] letter sent to Ellie:

I'm 37 and I am seeing a man who is also my age.  He is kind, attentive, doesn't smoke, drink or gamble.   He has a well-paying job and we get along well.  Neither of us have had any previous relationship experience.

After 2 months he asked if he could call me his girlfriend, I said yes but it would also be nice if we kissed each other once in a while.   He said that his insecurity prevents him from doing so.

I no longer feel the original spark.  I look for reasons to avoid him rather than seeing him.  I feel that the chance for romance is over.   At my age, this might be my last chance [to become a mother].

Should I stay or say good bye?

My response:

Here is a perfect example of a fear inside the man's mind helping to make the fear come true.  When he tells you that he doesn't kiss you because he is insecure, --- what he really means is that he is scared of rejection and losing you.  Which is exactly what will happen if he doesn't start being more physical.

You don't tell me why you have not been involved with other men, so that information is necessary if I am to make a better judgement of what should happen next. 

In spite of that lack of knowledge about you in particular, I suggest that the two of you start communicating on a much deeper level than you are at the present time.  

Tell him you are impressed with his good behavior but at the age of 37 you are running out of time to become a mother.  It is time for him to make a move.  Either he shows some emotion and physical attraction for you or you will have to look elsewhere.   

Then say you don't want to look elsewhere but you don't want to continue the way things are going right now either.   Don't be surprised if you do get physically involved and he isn't exactly as "good" as you dreamed he would be.

Give the both of you a chance to know each other intimately before you decide if this is forever or not.   Obviously it is  important to make sure that you will not become pregnant when you are trying to get to know each other better.       

SCAMMERS BE DAMMED!!!

Hello:

I am sure that I should have posted this message a long time ago.  I am not a "scammer."   I think that I can help people with their problems.   That does not mean that I have no problems.  

But it does mean that after 77 years of life, I can give advice in some areas that will prove to be beneficial to you.  If you want perfection, then you are living in the wrong world.  

You can find lots of people who will offer you perfection but it is only because they think that unless they can offer you such perfection, you will not listen to them. 

I have discovered a deeper level of understanding about how the human mind functions.   If I think that such knowledge can help you I will offer it to you without asking you for money.  

If your problem confuses me, I will tell you right away so that you can look elsewhere.  That is as close to the truth as you will get from anyone.   Give me a try; --- you won't regret it.

PLAYING AROUND WITH A "PLAYER"

Hello:

I am paraphrasing this situation from an article in my local newspaper.    A young woman’s girlfriend is living with a guy who is an unabashed,”player.”  The girlfriend asked her if she saw her man with another woman if she would want to know?  The girlfriend said definitely yes.

One night the young woman was out with her boyfriend and saw this “player” holding another woman’s hand at the bar.   As soon as the guy realized he had been seen, --- he promptly left.   Now the girlfriend is wondering if she should tell her friend what she saw.

___________________________________________

My response:

To deal with the truth as accurately as possible,  the girlfriend should have approached the woman at the bar and said the following.   “We don’t know each other but I hope you will believe me when I tell you that I want to do what is best for you and for a girlfriend of mine.”

Let me ask you this.   What did your male friend say was the reason why he left so abruptly?    Whatever way she responds you could then add.   Do you know that he is living with another woman and that most of the time she works while he --- “plays around?”

This behavior is the most straight forward and will probably catch him in a lie to his second female "friend."  It will also make it more likely that his “first” woman who is working to look after him will see  the truth  and react correctly.   If she does not, --- you just might lose a friend and it probably would be in your favor in the long run.    

If this girl does not get away from this loser, his dishonesty will finally catch up with her and it might cause her to have a long lasting depression from the follow up to this guy’s terrible behavior.   Especially if a baby is involved.

NOT THE SHARPEST KNIFE IN THE DRAWER

Hello:

On more than one occasion I have mentioned that when it comes to this internet technology, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer. This next story proves that comment in spades. 

When I first started writing a blog and joined google+ I would check my email to see if anyone was responding to my posts.   I never saw any such responses.

Recently I decided to click unto the icons for social media at the top of my email inbox page. There I became aware that one or two people had responded to my Posts or comments without me realizing it. 

Please accept my apology for failing to understand that I should have accessed the social media icons long ago.  If any of you are willing to do so, I would be more than pleased to answer any of your questions or comments about previous Posts that I have entered.

FROM ANN LANDERS

Hello:

Unfortunately this submission is rather long, nevertheless the story itself adds more weight to my conclusions regarding the importance of understanding fear on a deeper level than that which is currently understood.

_________________________________

People will do things differently, your instructions will probably be misunderstood. What you say is likely to be different from what they hear.

(Priscilla Elfrey)

____________________________________

 

ANN LANDERS

This story appeared in Ann Landers column in the “Toronto Star” newspaper many years ago.  By spending so much time listening to, and trying to help other people, and  getting feedback from readers who disagreed with her, Ann Landers provided a very valuable service to her readers.  

It was interesting to note that she openly admitted that many of the basic truths that she was prepared to take to the bank earlier in her career, were later assigned to the trash can in favor of deeper levels of truth.  The story in this case was entitled:  --- Chronic Depression.

       

“Dear Ann Landers:

I am 28 years old.  Seven years ago, I developed chronic depression.  After 4 years of agony I was given medication and I began to pull out of it.  My psychiatrist advised me not to return to my former occupation.  He claims that if I take on too much responsibility I will fall apart.

I am extremely shy.   I have an inferiority complex and hate the job that I have.  I have never felt loved by anyone.  My mother, father, sisters and brothers deserted me when I was ill.    

 

I asked my Psychiatrist to tell me the truth about my mental illness.  He said that if I avoid pressure situations and continue to take my medication faithfully, I may lead a fairly normal life.  Should I believe him Ann? 

 

Signed --- climbing out of darkness.”

Here is Ann Lander’s Answer:

“It sounds as if you are in the hands of a highly competent Doctor.  Listen to him.  Reach out for friendship.  I’m sure that you have a lot to give and there are so many folks like you who are lonely.    

 

Look in the phone book for Recovery Inc. (It is free.)  Attend the meetings.   Recovery’s members share problems similar to yours.  The emotional support they give is phenomenal.  Good luck and God Bless You.”

 

MY RESPONSE:

When you understand what distorted fear can do to the human mind, the above problems are far less complicated than one might expect.  To know that this young woman was probably never given the right advice as she journeyed through the maturing process, and that she may have been unduly relegated to the ranks of the mentally ill, leaves me with a sickening feeling as I write these words.

Suppose we took a 10-year old boy who was considered to be mentally, emotionally and physically well adjusted, and we locked him in a room where he obtained no outside stimulation except for the basic physical requirements to sustain life.

If then, at the age of 21, we released him into the outside world and he could not cope, or compete with his peers, we would not conclude that he was suffering from some form of mental illness.  We would know that he had been denied the opportunity to mature like the other people in his age group.

When the young girl in our Ann Lander’s story states that she is extremely shy and she has a massive inferiority complex, shouldn’t alarm bells ring inside the mind of the adults who should be nurturing this young mind?  Shouldn’t the Psychiatrist recognize these “symptoms” as a brilliantly lit microcosm of distorted fear reactions? 

Are they so preoccupied with the veracity of their psychological understanding that they fail to see the obvious?  Must this girl be shunted aside and told that she is useless when in fact the psychiatrist is acting like he is useless himself?

Shouldn’t it be obvious that this girl locked herself up in a voluntary prison designed to avoid fear reactions of embarrassment, guilt and failure?  A prison that was just as devastating to the maturing process for this young lady as the  “prison” for the boy in our above imaginary story.

Like the young woman in this story, I also suffered from feelings of inferiority when I was trying to get through adolescence.  Once in high school when I was required to give a speech in front of the class, my voice and body shook quite openly.  That teacher never had any advice or encouragement to offer me. 

He probably thought that my nervous system was inferior to that of other students and there was nothing that he or I could do about it.  At the time, with no other advice to fall back on, I came to the same decision about myself also.

Thank God that nowadays, the teachers are more in tune with psychological matters, and such a student would be referred to the proper channels for psychological help.  How sad to think that a person’s lifestyle and potential lifetime career can be sidetracked so easily.

Did you know that Winston Churchill stuttered and stammered when he was a youngster and he only went on to become one of the world’s finest orators?   Yes it is true that all of us have some such problems as we approach adult life and most of us overcome them.  But it should not be a hit and miss affair.                        

My performance in that classroom, and in many other interpersonal situations, should have earned me admission to a special class where psychological guidance would have helped me to change my incorrect approach to fear.  It is my fervent hope, that one of the by-products of this book will be the addition of such courses in every school in the entire world.

Returning to the letter in Ann Lander’s column, not only did the girl systematically lock herself out of the maturing process by her constant avoidance behavior, (shyness etc.), but she compounded the problem by telling herself that she was inferior to others.

The current level of psychological understanding that is being practiced by many in that profession has concluded that the girl in our story is suffering from physical or chemical damage inside her brain.  They believe that this perceived damage is the reason for her extreme shyness and medication and avoiding too much responsibility is the best recommendation for such people. 

But if they were right, how could some people who were extremely shy when they were young, become absolute extroverts in later years?  The answer is that these conditions are all negotiable and can be corrected with the proper psychological help.  

What the girl in Ann Lander’s story really needed was a competent psychiatrist who understands what fear can do to the human mind, --- who knows the value of empathic thinking on the part of a therapist, --- who could guide her in the hierarchical approach to overcoming fears, --- and who could gently persuade her, that her problems are all negotiable.

Her self-proclaimed inferiority complex tells us that she never was able to sustain any confidence about herself.  We need individuals who can assess this girl’s failure to experience specific and necessary maturing achievements and to motivate her to become involved in these experiences.

She has to give herself the right to make mistakes and fail.  Obviously you try not to make serious mistakes but she must at all times begin to learn from her mistakes.  This approach, systematically encouraged by others, has the potential to allow this girl to actively participate successfully in the adult world.

The advice that the psychiatrist gave this girl can no longer be justified.  His lack of understanding can no longer be used as a reason to set this girl’s life, and others like her, aside.  Since her problems are all negotiable, she deserves the chance to embrace life with all the happiness and pride that a reasonable level of confidence and successful performance can potentially give to her.

Did her bio-psychiatrist ever ask her if she was afraid of the feelings of fear itself?  If she was, --- and I would be willing to bet on it, --- then, every time that she tried an achievement that activated the emotion of fear, she avoided it.  Obviously she can not take any pressure or adult stress, she hasn’t experienced the maturing process.

Can you remember the fear you felt when you first tried to ride a bicycle?  If you never got past that fear, then you may never have learned to ride a bike.   That wouldn’t prevent you from becoming a successful adult, but if you applied the same type of avoidance behavior to a conglomeration of achievements, then you would begin to accumulate enough failures of commission --- or omission,  to invalidate the maturing process.

So why does medication actually help some people?  Some of them act on the brain to make the person more relaxed and less susceptible to the emotion of fear reactions.  In this state, some people can do things that they can’t do without the medication.  There is a disheartening parallel here to someone using alcohol to give himself a shot of bravery.  

Of course it doesn’t always have a positive result.  One person, who could not speak in a conference setting at work, took medication to calm his nerves which worked fine except that the ideas that he expressed were disjointed and his audience  wondered what was wrong with him. 

The point being that as long as you try something, even if you fail, there is the potential for you to learn from it and be better the next time.  If your fear makes you avoid the achievement, then no new learning is possible.

Another factor in determining that medication has helped a person concerns the power of suggestion.  This brilliant psychiatrist, who knows what he is talking about, has told me that my brain is damaged.  The neuroleptic drug or drugs that he is giving me allow me to function normally.  These positive thoughts can, for a variable period of time, alleviate the conglomerated fears that are actually causing the problems.

Ann Lander’s answer that the girl was in the hands of a competent Doctor was incorrect.  It is usually right to place ones confidence in those who have studied something all of their lives, but at the same time, the truth is not interested in how long you have studied a problem.  If you are wrong in your assumptions, no amount of time can make them right.  Only increased knowledge can change a wrong, or false idea into a right one..

Ann’s further comments about self-help groups like Recovery Inc. are excellent.  But should these people be required to find their own way out of the quagmire when structured help should be available?  There are thousands of competent psychiatrists that help these people out of their dilemmas.  It is the confused psychiatrists, who don’t know that they are confused, and the obtuse bio-psychiatrist’s that must change their incorrect beliefs.

Knowing that these problems are all negotiable, places a heavy burden upon me to finish this book and give these people a chance to be “recalled to life.” I hope that this story from Ann Lander’s column from long ago, helps to convince you that understanding fear equals understanding human behavior.