Most married men at some point learn to be careful with the Calm Down advice. When my wife is in the middle, beginning, or ending of a grievance airing session, commonly called a rant, I’ve learned to take a breath and let her finish it. I’ve also learned not to ask her if she is done. I let a minute or two or three pass and try to understand some of what she was saying and then trying to figure out why she was saying it.
I still have the manly flaw of trying to fix things but I am better now at disguising it and holding it off for a few minutes. I do it by using my version of asking gentle questions to probe a bit. I don’t know if she knows what I’m doing or not, but she will now for sure.
Try as I might, I still like to get to the heart of the matter which is a prerequisite to fixing things. I’ve just learned to be a bit more patient on the way to getting there. She is not prone to tantrums or excessive ranting and I am getting more patient these days so I think we are meshing better than ever in our communications.
But I still know something is bugging her. And I don’t like to see her bugged out. I know it would be good for me to get over that, but that’s the way it is.
But lately, more than in many years past, I’ve noticed that one of my favorite personality disorders, Histrionic Personality Disorder is spreading more broadly throughout society. This is kind of a bugged out on steroids on a societal level disorder.
I got a call one time from one of my church members and she was screaming very loudly, hysterically into the phone trying to tell me that her cat was caught in the wheel of a bike that was hanging up in her garage. It took quite a bit of talking and time to get her to calm down for me to get her to walk over to the bicycle and gently lift the cat out of the top of the spokes that ensnared her. Crazy cats, they get in some weird spots, right? But they are cats, we get it. The image of a cat hanging by its neck in the spokes of a bike hanging from the ceiling would freak me out a bit too, but wouldn’t paralyze me. It would send me into action.
The histrionic behavior doesn’t know how to go from freak out to action, it gets stuck in freak out. Freak out is the desired behavior it seems, as if the act of being freaked out is what is most important, not solving the problem. I don’t know why this is so, but I’m seeing it more today than ever. So many are freaked out about what they think is coming that they can’t do anything about it and something terrible is going to happen.
We always live with the possibility that something terrible is going to happen. We have no idea as to how close we have been to nuclear disaster among the nuclear powers, and still remain in a dangerous situation today. But we don’t freak out about it too much. We’ve learned to face it, in some cases put it out of our minds, or whatever. Right or wrong, we have some way of calming down.
We can’t stay amped up as much as we are all the time. We simply have to calm down. And talk to each other. Most of what we think is going to happen that is so bad simply is not going to happen. Something might, but we can deal with it. We can get the cat out of the spokes. But we have to calm down.
Don’t you trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. I’m not saying to forgo planning or practice to face future problems or even catastrophes, in fact some prep work will increase our confidence. I’m just saying, slow down, calm down, plan your work and work your plan.