The Stress Doc Letter
Cybernotes from the Online Psychohumorist ™

JAN 03

Happy New Year!

Fight when you can
Take flight when you must
Flow like a dream
In the Phoenix we trust!

Table of Contents

Offerings:       Training Kit & Book; AOL Chat
Heads Up:       Book Promo, Radio Interviews, Hong Kong Civil Service Training and
                       Development Institute, Hartford Courant & CBS-New York Radio,
                       Harvard Management Communication Letter
Shrink Rap:    The Art of Risk-Taking or Creatively Designing 2003
Main Essay:    Highly Sensitive People and the Art of Confrontation (Sec. II)
Readers:         History Repeats, True Confessions and Corporate Lingo

Shrink Rap Essay

Reflecting on ways to "Seize the New Year," the Stress Doc shares some strategies for letting go.  He also provides a personal example of rebuilding the fire after being downsized and out along with keys to creative risk-taking.


The Art of Risk-Taking or Creatively Designing 2003

After an unprecedented 15 months, a myriad of individuals and organizations continue to reflect, restructure and reemerge from the long and far-reaching, post-9/11 shadows.  A number of folks are starting to see the proverbial tunnel light; some have been touched by enlightenment.  While many are still grappling with their place in a vulnerable economy and industry subjected to fits and starts, consolidations and contractions.  As we embark on a new year, the compelling question:  How can we not just survive but get a jump-start, if not blast off, in 2003?

For boldly navigating these uncertain times, we may call on the compassion of family and friends.  Hopefully, we experience collegial, educational and business support from PCMA and individual members as well as other professional networks.  But there is an additional supportive pillar, actually more a self-renewing or self-generating life raft, for surviving and thriving during these "T n' T" - "Trauma and Transition" - times:  a capacity for "Creative Risk-Taking (CRT) or what I call "the art of designing disorder."  CRT (hey, in DC you have to throw in at least one acronym) involves the ability for "letting go" of outmoded assumptions, positions and practices.  It also means, despite the angst, exploring, developing and realistically testing out new processes and pathways.

Let me first share some thoughts on "the rising from the ashes potential" of letting go.  Then I'll provide a personal, Phoenix-like example of transforming "T n' T" energy and opportunity into path blazing muscles and movement.

Consider this "Six 'F' Model for Transforming Loss and Channeling Change":
1.  One must embrace the sadness and/or feelings of anger for having to loosen the hold on a familiar past.
2.  One needs to grapple with the anxiety (and its flip side, the excitement) of an unpredictable future.
3.  One may believe one's role, skills or experience are being devalued; there may be pangs of self-doubt or, even, feelings of shame, that is, a loss of face.
4.  One must eventually confront the looming challenge:  despite the personal and/or professional "sturm und drang," one must recover and redesign a new productive focus.
5.  One often requires feedback from one or more trusted and objective others for reaffirming a precrisis identity as well as for encouraging, germinating and/or evaluating new plans.
6.  One needs faith -- whether from a transcendent power or from the higher power synergy of your self-created support team - that following these critical six steps will:  a) generate hope, b) rebuild your fire and c) enable you to reach new goals and unforeseen heights.

From Reorganization to Rejuvenation

Now for the personal vignette:  In the mid-90s, after almost two years as a team-building consultant for a division of the Food and Drug Administration, I was squarely hit by a powerful and painful truth -- "Reorg Happens!"  During a division-wide organizational shakeup an outside micro-manager, uncomfortable with my efforts at cultivating genuine, professional and constructive dialogue between management and employees and within the management-supervisor corps was made Division Head.  Big surprise…the Stress Doc's services were no longer desired, despite a spectrum of pleas to the contrary.  To add insult to injury, this dismissal occurred ten days before Christmas.

Moping around the house, too often mindlessly staring at my computer screen, I belatedly admitted not exploring my AOL package apart from occasionally responding to a personal ad.  So I finally crawled onto a Writers' Bulletin Board, once again contemplating generating a love-hate relationship with this most vexing yet, ultimately, fulfilling activity.  Perhaps my hesitance also reflected a distinct aversion for another rejection.

To my surprise, there was an electronic newsletter seeking humor writers.  And even more surprising, an encouraging e-mail from the editor on my submission popped up the next day.  Now humorous stories with a psychological bent based on consulting and therapy work definitely deviated from this newsletter's standard computer jokes fare.  Well, the publisher nervously gave me the green light, albeit with some stringent restrictions - 100 words.  (100 words!  A blow to my ego, of course.)

Not surprisingly, some of the readers, especially younger ones, saw my writings as an alien life form.  They wanted to banish me to some black hole in cyberspace.  Fortunately there were also mature readers who provided enthusiastic feedback.  And an expanded Stress Doc column became a regular feature.

Give me a column inch and some renewed confidence…and I'll take a screen.  Now I approached an AOL community program called "Online Psych."  A psychological column infused with humor…a definite winner.  And a Stress Doc page, along with the title of "Online Psychohumorist" ™ was born.  (You decide where the emphasis on "psychohumorist" belongs.)  I'll forego the cybersteps; but a five year evolution has resulted in a multi-award-winning website, recently cited on National Public Radio.

With the demise of the original humor pub, I started putting out my own e-newsletter.  This has led to:  a) informal cyber syndication, b) online and offline publications asking to reprint articles from around the world, e.g., in the past month, from the Institute of Secretaries of Zaire, Africa to The Hong Kong Human Resources Management Institute and c) an increase of web-generated speaker bookings.

A Key Close

So taking some risk, pushing my comfort zone and cyber envelope yielded real and expanded horizons.  In conclusion, here are "Four Keys of Creative Risk-Taking," strategic steps in the New Year for "Confronting Your Intimate FOE:  Fear of Exposure":

1.  Aware-ily Jump in Over Your Head.  When it comes to productive risk-taking, don't "Just do it!"  Notice the neologism:  "Aware-ily" - a mix of aware and warily.  Still, sometimes the only way to truly test the temperature and water current is to finally jump in.  (Of course, as we'd say in the bayou, first check for alligators.)  The value of immersion is you quickly learn your strengths along with gaps in resources, skills and experience.  And while often humbling, taking the plunge surely sharpens focus and motivates maximum survival effort.

2.  Strive to Survive the High Dive.  While there are no guarantees, here are four survival measures:
a. Strive high and embrace failure.  Forego perfectionist voices and fantasies; work to see so-called failure as the temporary gap between an ideal state and your present reality.
b. Develop a realistic time frame.  Consider these two aphorisms:  "Establishing a beachhead doesn't mean you've conquered the island" and "Many battles are fought and lost before a major undertaking is won."
c. Be tenaciously honest.  If the pressure is getting to you, come up for air and for an ear.  The most productive individuals are continuously monitoring operational effectiveness and efficiency.
d. Establish a support system.  Risk-takers definitely need some TLC:  "Tender Loving Criticism" and Tough Loving Care" for managing the stress of living on the edge and for bathing psychic, if not physical, wounds.

3.  Thrive On Thrustration.  Become more problem-minded, not just solution-oriented; don't rush to judgment.  Be a smoldering psychic volcano.  For a while, tolerate the conflict between thrusting ahead with direct action and uncertain frustration, that fertile yet volatile state of "thrustration."  You are feeding the creative fires and priming the imaginative, emotive and visual right hemisphere of your brain.  Take an incubation vacation, and then be prepared for an upsurge of repressed memories, novel imagery and associations and, possibly, an "Aha!" explosion.

4.  Design for Error and Opportunity.  Innovative risk-takers are more attuned to a range of possibilities than to "one right way" or a fixed goal.  They initiate action without absolute predesign predictability.  They know a narrow safe course creates the illusion of control (often short-lived).  Uncertainty and ambiguity actually allows more freedom to connect and combine seemingly unrelated ideas and processes; to transfer the conventional into your own original, big picture design.  While this exploratory approach induces error, in open systems startup misplays are vital signs for self-correcting and self-challenging feedback.

Mindful of these keys, some final notes for New Year inspiration:

Remember, errors of judgment or design rarely confirms one's incompetence:  they more likely reveal inexperience or immaturity, perhaps even boldness.  Our so-called failures can be channeled as guiding streams (sometimes raging rivers) of opportunity and experience that ultimately enrich -- widen and deepen -- the risk-taking passage.  If we can just immerse ourselves in these unpredictable, yet often regenerative waters.

To "Practicing Safe Stress" and designing good adventures in 2003!

Readers' Submissions

Subj:    How History Repeats Itself
From: MDodick

Mrs. Rosenberg, a fine Jewish matron from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, found herself stranded late one night at a fashionable southern resort...one that did not, ordinarily, admit Jews.  When she inquired at the front desk about a room, the desk clerk looked at his book and said:  "Sorry, no rooms. This hotel is full."

Suspicious about his mind set, Mrs.Rosenberg said:  "I beg your pardon...your sign says you have vacancies."

The desk clerk stammered and said, curtly:  "I shouldn't say this, but you know, we really don't admit Jews in this hotel. Why don't you try the other side of town."

Mrs. Rosenberg stiffened noticeably and said:  "I'll have you know...recently, I converted to your religion."

Sensing something, the desk clerk said: "Oh, yeah? Well, let me give you a little test!"
"How was Jesus born?"

"That's easy" Mrs. Rosenberg replied:  "He was born to a virgin named Mary...in a little town, called Bethlehem."

"Not 'Bad'!" replied, the clerk..."Tell me, more."

Checking her memory, Mrs. Rosenberg said:  "He was born in a manger!"

"That's right," said the hotel clerk.  "And why was he born in a manger?" asked the clerk.

Holding her head defiantly high, Mrs. Rosenberg reared back and said loudly, for all to hear:  "Because a putz like you wouldn't give a Jewish lady a room in the hotel!"

Subj: True Confessions 
From: RocknRollSal79

True Confessions

Four women are sitting around playing bridge. The first woman says, "You know, girls, I have known you all a long time and there is something I must get off my chest. I am a kleptomaniac. But, don't worry, I have never stolen from you and I never will. We have been friends for too long."

The second woman says, "Well, since we are having true confessions here, I must get something off my chest, too. I am a nymphomaniac. But don't worry, I have not hit on your husbands. They don't interest me and never will; we have been friends for too long."

"Well," says the third woman, "I, too, must confess something. I am a lesbian. But do not worry, I will not hit on you. None of you are my type, and besides, we have been friends too long for me to ruin our
friendship."

They all look expectantly at the fourth woman, who stands up and says, "I, too, have a confession to make. I am an uncontrollable gossip, and if you will excuse me now, I have some phone calls to make."