“That sounds kind of egotistical and vain.”
“Or does it sound like you want to make the best and happiest of yourself so that you can, in turn, help others make the best and happiest of themselves?”
“Okay, so I’m a good guy, a bright guy, a guy who has made some major mistakes, but one that desperately wants to start over, with a new ’tude, a POS ’TUDE ALL THE WAY! ALL THE TIME! Does that satisfy you?”
“It satisfies me if it satisfies you! All I want is for you to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy and well balanced.”
Sammy smiled lamely. “You’re sure you don’t want me to be translated, too?”
I gave him a hard noogie. “No. But I do think sometime you should unload your ‘beginning thing.’”
“I intend to do that—next never-day! But thanks for seeing me in a hurry. I think I’ve got at least Plan A sort of lined up in my mind. I really do appreciate you.”
“Don’t appreciate me. Appreciate the girl who had your appointment. When I called and told her you, no name, had a right now problem and that you were in an extremely hurtful situation, she gladly gave up her time, remembering when she had been in a like place herself.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be. It was good for her. Part of her healing. She was given the pleasure of helping someone else to heal himself, and that puts a different spin on it for both of you.”
“Well, thank her and think luck to me.”
“I’d rather think pos thoughts for you.”
“Pos thoughts for you, too. Bye.”
I raised my hand to wave good-bye and bit my lip, I wanted so much to ask him to call and let me know what happened.
Sammy looked at me knowingly. We were kindred spirits, as all people would be if they would just allow it.
“I know what you’re thinking, brain unscrambler. You want me to let you know what happens.”
“I’m trapped. The student has now become the all-knowing teacher. The client has become the therapist.”
He sighed deeply. “I wish.”
I wished all my clients could be as intuitive and open and anxious to learn and change and heal themselves. If he knew the resistance that the girl who had given up her time had encountered along her way back, he probably would have appreciated her magnanimous gesture a hundred times more.
As Sammy left I handed him my standard exercise on Distorted Thinking.
DISTORTED THINKING EVALUATION
QUESTION: How can I tell when my thoughts are distorted?
ANSWER: When you sense they are negative.
Everyone has negative things happen in their lives, but the mentally healthy person looks for positive solutions, positive coping skills, and even positive standing stills! The Alcoholics Anonymous’ Serenity Creed is an inspired example of the above.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Grade yourself from A to F on the following test.
Retake the test once a week, grading yourself each time. You’ll love watching your positive progression!
GRADE (WEEKS 1 to 4)
1. I felt discouraged and I
I should have
2. Someone irritated me and I
I should have
3. Someone didn’t give me the attention I needed so I
I should have
4. The wind blew my new? into the mud and I
I should have
5. Someone in authority told me what to do and I
I should have
6. I felt jealous and I
I should have
7. My self-esteem was low so I
I should have
8. I felt guilty and I
I should have
9. I felt sad and I
I should have
10. I felt mad and I
I should have
11. I felt a suicidal thought and I
I should have
Write your own list of things that “bug” you, hurt you, or in other ways make you feel negative. This is an effective and quick way to heighten your awareness regarding incidents that can distort your thinking and build up negatives like pebbles in your pack until they, the little things, as well as the big things, can weigh you down into the blackest of all black pits of depression. Never allow yourself to forget that the way to negate a negative thought or action is to NEUTRALIZE IT WITH A BRIGHT-WHITE-LIGHT POSITIVE THOUGHT OR ACTION!
The key to having good mental health and staying in control is:
as old as dirt
as simple and as warming as sunshine
as comforting as love
and as eternal as positivity
Positivity is taught in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the teachings of Buddha and Confucius in China, Vishnu and others in India, and throughout most cultures and religions. The premise is simple, “For as he thinketh in his (her) heart, so is he (she).” (Proverbs 23:7)
SUMMARY OF SESSION
Sammy faced his self-imposed self-destructive relapse regarding Harmony (Mo). He is beginning to understand the NEGATIVE TRAP that is always out there.
Samuel Gordon Chart
Saturday night, September 10, 10:32 P.M.
Telephone Conversation
SAMUEL (SAMMY) GORDON, 15 years old
Sammy Gordon called. I had been asleep, but the moment I heard his voice I was as alert as it is possible for a person to be. After his first “hello” I wanted to ask what happened? Instead I put on my professional therapist’s demeanor and listened as he said that things between him and Mo were “cool,” but that he wanted to see me soon. Remembering that I was going out of town on Monday, I suggested maybe we could have a “freebie” lunch session. I’d meet him in the park just blocks from his house and we’d pick up a couple of hot dogs from the vendor.
Samuel Gordon Chart
Sunday, September 11, noon
Freebie Lunch Session in the park
Ninth Visit
SAMUEL (SAMMY) GORDON, 15 years old
“Hi, Wow, you sprang for puppy dogs and everything. Thanks, good buddy.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being you! Connecting with kids like you who are willing to work at changing their lives, is the greatest joy and reward any mental health professional can receive.”
“You’re prejudiced because I’ve got green eyes like yours.”
“No.”
“Okay, guess you just casually came to hear about Mo.”
“You and Mo.”
“Well, when I got home from seeing you on Friday I spent hours writing and rewriting and rewriting a letter to her. I didn’t tell her every detail about how I’d gotten off track in the first place, just how lost and confused and unstrung and upset and scrambled I’d become after that. How it had made me feel like an outcast from my own race, like a subspecies or something. How, after that, I couldn’t relate to Mom and the girls, or myself, or anyone, or anything, even her. I told her how horrifically and eternally sorry I was for the time under the bleachers, and that I’d understand if she could never forgive me. I told her how lonely and dark and unprotected and unlovely and unloved I’d felt in that nonworld, and how I’d been irresistibly drawn to the gang because I felt they’d take me in when nobody else would, or could. I told her I often felt that most of the guys in the gang felt like I did, that the only way to survive was through physicalness. They didn’t know any other way, and I had allowed myself to forget all the other ways.”
Sammy stopped long enough to scarf down a hot dog, then continued his story, almost in a trance. “It was after midnight when I finally finished the letter and sneaked it up to her house and slipped it through the mail slot in the front door. My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel the blood roaring in my ears and in my head. It was hammering in my chest like a jackhammer. I wondered for a mi
nute if I was going to have a heart attack on her front walk, and the medics and police would come with their sirens screaming, and everybody would either feel sorry for me as anything or want to drag off my carcass and throw it with good riddance into the Dumpster.”
“Dear, dear, Samuel Gordon. How deeply you must have hurt.”
He seemed to ignore me, or perhaps he was so deep into his experience that he actually didn’t hear me.
“I had always gotten good grades in English; now I worried and agonized about my spelling and punctuation and syntax and stuff that was totally irrelevant. The night was endless. I felt I was caught in some kind of time warp that just stayed in place.”
“But you did get out of it. You’re here.”
“Yeah, eventually. After eons and eternities and infinities, the phone rang.”
He stopped and sucked at his Coke so slowly that I couldn’t stand it.
“And?”
“It was her, Mo! I thought I was hallucinating or whatever it is you do when you don’t hear right. Then she started to cry, and as her tears ran through the phone wires I felt like they were drowning me, too, or maybe they were my own tears at that point. She said she’d read every word of my letter four or five times, and she didn’t know when she’d ever felt so compassionate and empathetic in her life. I woke Mom up and asked her if we could have Mo over for breakfast.
“Mom was as happy as I was, and she woke the girls and all three of them started chirping around the house like it was Christmas or something. It’s really funny, maybe even scary how many people are there to help you when you’re honestly trying to turn your life around. For one moment I felt how unworthy I was, then I made one of the firmest commitments I’ve ever made in my life. I would live worthy of all the blessings that had ever been, and would ever be, given to me. It made me feel so good that…I dunno.”
“That you began chirping, too?”
“Yes, I guess. And I got a million things to do, like go see Mo at two-thirty, but I just had to tell you.”
“You’re a good, strong, brilliant, straight-thinking young man. You’re to be admired, Sammy Gordon, and don’t you ever forget it!”
He grinned and sprinted off down the street. After a few steps he stopped and yelled, “I didn’t read your Distorted Thinking stuff, but I’m going to soon. Promise!”
I couldn’t help wondering how much his reaction to “the Mo thing” would have changed if he had read the “Distorted Thinking stuff” before his distorted thinking episode.
Samuel Gordon Chart
Wednesday, September 21, 9 P.M.
Telephone Conversation
SAMUEL (SAMMY) GORDON, 15 years old
Sammy telephoned. I could immediately tell by his voice that something was way off track. This time he didn’t seem angry, frustrated, or depressed, but rather completely unemotional, like he had turned all his feelings off completely. I interrupted to ask if I could record our conversation so that he could listen to it later and perhaps consider our discussion from a different perspective. He consented in the same colorless, nobody-home monotone he had been using, and I turned the machine on.
“What’s happening, Sammy?”
“As though I don’t have enough to handle, Lance has started really boogering up my life.”
“Lance? Your father?”
“He’s been writing, phoning, sending telegrams and…right now I simply can’t handle his nuttiness on top of my own. He just called four times!”
“What does he say?”
“I don’t know. I just hang up the phone like I tear up his letters and stuff.”
“Oh.”
“He even had the guts to send me his old original Fats Waller music chart that he knew I’d always coveted.”
“What did you do about that?”
“I sent it back with a message scribbled across the top of the package: RECEIVER UNKNOWN TO YOU.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“I feel nuthin’! It’s like he and I are protoplasm or something. How can protoplasm be expected to feel anything?”
“Does your mom know about this?”
“Yeah, he’s been annoying her, too, with his stupid stuff.”
“What does she want to do…want you to do?”
“I don’t know. I won’t let her talk. I won’t listen. I don’t want to hear.”
“Did you hear what you just said?”
He hesitated for a few seconds. “You mean about the…I don’t want to hear?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s true. I want him to just…drop dead…leave me…leave us alone.”
“Do you mean that literally?”
“Absolutely!”
“Absolutely?”
Well, maybe not absolutely. I just want him to go away…stay out of our lives! I was just beginning to think I was getting all my gonzos together and feeling pretty much like the old me and then this came up.”
“What came up?”
“Mom’s insisting that I talk to him.”
“And?”
“And no way am I going to let that drop-us-on-our heads, retard bastard…sorry. Anyway, no way am I going to let…him…into my life again! He’s too big a part of the shit I’m just shuffling out of. He made his choice! He’s outta my life…gone…disappeared…evaporated…vanished…passed, I WISH!”
“It sounds like you’re facing quite a challenge.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think it might be easier to find a solution for the problem than just to stand there and let it keep pounding on your head?”
“Sure it would be, if there was a solution.”
I sat quietly for a few seconds, happy that Sammy had turned more than his pilot light on.
“There’s gotta be some way out!”
“Ummmm.” I wanted Sammy to discover his own way out.
“Well I could…I don’t know. I just know I can’t talk to him.”
“Can’t?”
He started venting his anger on me. “You think it would be so easy! You don’t understand that he would just pulverize me, bury me in that black, stinking hellhole I’m just getting out of, so deep I’d never get out again, ever! I don’t know why in hell I ever called you.”
“Because you know I care about you and can help, if you’ll let me.”
Sammy started crying. Deep, wracking, rocky, dry sobs that shuddered through the phone line and into my ear. “I thought I was getting it together. I really did. Now I’m right back…”
“No, you’re not, dear Sammy. Believe me I’ve been here before with many other kids, and there will be an honorable, happy way out.”
“I hope you’re right.” He thought for a while. “I know you’re right! I got lost in the canyon once when I was a little kid, and I didn’t think I’d ever get out, especially when it got dark and I heard every scary sound that had ever been barked or growled or woofed or whistled or hooted by any beast or fowl that had ever been created.”
“Did you get out, that’s the question.”
“Yes, I did, and I did it all by my tiny little self-assertive self, well almost by myself. Actually one of the track dogs found me and took me back.”
“Is this more scary and difficult than that?”
“Every bit as! But you’re not going to say what I want you to say, are you?”
“Probably not, if you think I’m not.”
“At times like this when you’re so mean to me, I wonder what we’re paying you for.” He sounded embarrassed. “That’s a joke, lady.”
“Okay, I’m laughing.”
“Well, let’s see, since I have to do all the work. What about if we sent all the bastards in my life a one-way ticket to Somalia?”
“I suppose you and I will print the money for the multitude’s tickets?”
“Now you’re laughing at me.”
“No, I’m laughing with you.”
“I guess that’s better than crying.”
“Yeah,
lots.”
“Mom really wants me to talk to him.”
“Have you considered it?”
“Do you think I could handle it?”
“You know I know you can!”
“But only if it’s just me and him and you!”
“Sounds certified sane to me.”
“And Mom, don’t you think we should have Mom?”
“I do, if you do.”
“You’re such a wuss. You make me do all the work and hard thinking and putting together, and you know all along what you’re pushing me into, don’t you?”
“Yep, sometimes.”
“Well…okay. If you insist, I’ll have Mom call and tell him to meet us at your place. When?”
“Do you want it to be soon?”
“The sooner the better. It’s going to be a hairy, scary encounter.”
I looked at my calendar. “Do you think he can make it late this Friday the twenty-third or early Saturday the twenty-fourth?”
“Part of me hopes he can’t.”
“Part of you hopes he can too, so you can get this challenge over with, right?”
“Nope. Well, yep. I guess it has to be done sometime. Actually I can’t wait to get it over with so I can get on with my life.”
“Good for you! Call me if those dates aren’t feasible. I’ll try to make time, anytime for you.”
“You’re looking forward to seeing me crunched and smashed and mashed and bashed aren’t you?”
“Not.”
“I know you’re not. That’s the only reason I can say it. Keep your fingers crossed.”
“It’s not going to be nearly as bad as you may think, Sammy.”
“If you say so! I’ll try to hang on to that thought, and don’t worry about me. I’m going to go sit under the light therapy lamp and relax…relax…relax. Like you say, ‘Relax…rest…refresh…’ I’ll pretend I’m in a buttercup-covered meadow with a little trout stream gurgling by, and I’ll listen to the pos things we’ve discussed on the tapes I’ve brought home and I’ll start, RIGHT NOW, putting back into my life all the ingredients that will make me happy and healthy and whole.”