Starbucks Diversity Training and other Important Matters

Ducks in a row

Today's the day! Starbucks is closing for the afternoon. If you work there you'll be training up, as they say at Relationship-Wise.com, a group of people who simply hate sexual harassment. 

Starbucks will be using The Kaleidoscope Group, a Chicago (!) based diversity consultancy.

And for those of us who just want a cup of late afternoon Joe, it won't hurt you any to miss it.

You'll sleep better, maybe.  

Let's get on with the show.

Muir Woods Or Bust

About a month ago, when those of us who suffer the long Chicago winters woke up to birds singing, temperatures in the 70’s, and sunny, sunny skies, I took to lubing up my bicycle and filling the tires. Time, finally, to ride to work.  

Spring is a big deal for Chicagoans battling W-PTSD, Weather Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We immediately mistrust everything, especially our perceptions about reality. Is it really going to stay warm? Or is this merely a temporary drop in temp.  We become hyper-aware, check our weather apps again and again, seeking out abrupt changes that will make us wish we wore a sweater, or sorry we forgot our snow boots (in April). 

But on this day strangers smile at one another on the street, whispering, Finally! The exclamation is like sharing a secret-- no explanation, no more words necessary. It is finally warm. We are healed.

So I ride my bike to work.

The bike path runs parallel to the Chicago river, and at the underpass are ducklings and geese greeting one another in the water. Soon we'll see occasional canoes and kayaks, kids rowing hard. I stop my bike to gaze into the water and see a styrofoam hamburger container, the kind you might get at a take-out place.  It is floating out there on the river like a boat. A misplaced bit of garbage that might be in the river, might travel downstream until it hits the Gulf of Mexico. 

before 

This bothers me a lot, seeing that styrofoam box in the river, knowing it isn’t biodegradable. And it hurts my need for order, beauty.  About a yard away is a goose (not shown), a beautiful creature, sitting proudly in the water. He is staring at me as if to say,  I didn’t make this mess. You guys did.

floating burger in a box

That's when I remembered the book I promised to review ages ago, MUIR WOODS OR BUST, a very nice little paperback, good for the beach and apropos to our discussion about garbage in a river. 

Because this is about me, I have to confess, that cringe is not my thing. I still remember the earwig in a Star Trek movie, avoid anything that makes my stomach turn, which means skipping most futuristic television, and some really good movies. So the fact that I kept reading MUIR WOODS, knowing full well that there might be more cringe material after reading about the stink bugs that have invaded the homes of our author's little neighborhood, probably because of polution, tells all. 

 IAN WOOLLEN’s  Muir Woods kept me reading! Having a low bar for novels, that's all that is required, no need for psychological import. Muir Woods,  despite the stink bugs and that the protagonist is a therapist, kept me reading. You’re all psychologically astute, so whatever you’re thinking about my not liking books about therapists is probably correct. 

But this is about a marriage and family therapist, and realistic, too, he's such a humanist, not an every day therapist, and there are only so many of those. This therapist is depressed, aging, a scholar who has recently has lost his spouse, a rabid environmentalist. He misses her desperately, converses with her, imagines her while he drives, sees her in the rearview mirror (or am I making that up?). He sees her watch him play poker on poker night, and this alone is good story, as is the story about their son, a seemingly lost soul, a gamer/game programmer, who stares at a screen during his waking hours.

Who doesn’t fear that this is the future of all young sons?

It is futuristic, in that way. The world will be designed at the pleasure of talented children, and could be colorful, if our boy has any color to him, but he won't, not until he meets someone, he'll be a mourner and a downer, glued to a chair, programming the perfect game. But he meets someone! For our author is a romantic, and this makes the story so much happier, just plain better, for you do have to wonder if they will make it as a couple. And isn't that what all couples therapists are wondering most of the time?

So despite the cringe, the environmental blights, the dim, dreary, catastrophic events, and the  
air, if there is any, that just feels bad, this is a book about people getting help from random events. Ian has woven them all together, masterfully. There’s so much plot, so much really good fanciful plot, so much story, well, eventually I did finish it and here we are, in the middle of a review. Were it not for the plot, there would be no review, you see, for we therapists, you see, are in it for the story, and might not deign to review a book with little story.

And even better, there's a satisfying ending, tying together many diverse and engaging characters. 

Where could Mr. Woollen have possibly have come up with great plot and so many weird, diverse, engaging characters (that I haven't the strength or time to describe)? 

One suspects Ian is a therapist, or worse, had one for a mother or a father, or heaven forbid, both. He could be an ACOT, Adult Child of a Therapist, or maybe just somebody like me, with all that education under his belt, who just likes to write.

Sure, check this one out. And no littering, okay? See to it that our rivers, our world is habitable.

therapydoc 

By Land and By Sea

Even if it is 40 degrees in Chicago in April,
sometimes a boy's gotta' fish.

Last week was Passover, so we took a little time off work, hosted a few guests. Something of a family reunion. Although not everyone could make it, attendance was pretty good.

We're at Lincoln Park, here, FD's showing the giraffes our kite. They were impressed.

Once or twice, if you're a regular reader, you've found me depressed after a holiday break like this. The kids come, they go, they take my grandchildren with them. They threaten to leave one or two behind, but the little people somehow find their way to their car seats at the end of the holiday. Although I miss them already, it's okay. It always was.

We played a lot of games, some indoors. This year's indoor Bozo's Grand Prize Game was even more of a hit than last year. I didn't tell the kids that Bozo the Clown has passed on to that big circus in the sky.

There's this idea that children really prefer a good cardboard box to the toy inside, and it has been shown, without a doubt, to be statistically significant. After they all left I spent a bit of time smashing boxes for recycling, and throwing things away. I spent about eight hours getting my house together, and will need another couple of weeks to find things, return them to their proper owners. (Empath Daught, if you're reading this, I found some make-up with the chometz (rhymes with dumb-its, means not for Passover use), and someone's sleeveless tee-shirt is still hanging in the bathroom upstairs.)

What else, what else. The best thing about a family reunion is that the generations divide. Sure, it's great for the grandparents to bond with everyone, but leaving the younger people to talk until 3 a.m., just talk, catch up on their lives, and me and FD not hearing a word of it, is kind of wonderful, if you ask me.

This is the essence, really, of a family therapy, that siblings should have their own relationship with one another, not something based upon their relationship to their parents, although that's obviously okay, too. The closeness is something to shoot for, and the way to shoot for it is to get the parents out of the room.

Same thing, really, with marriage. You have to get your parents out of that relationship, too, although it's surely a good thing that they're there, if they are there, when you need them. Nothing like having a parent around when you need one. Same, too, with kids. I called one of mine yesterday. Conversation went like this:

Uh, honey, are you around tomorrow at noon?
Son: I think so!
Great, the guy is coming to fix the dryer and I'm with patients until 1:00.
Son: No problem. Will there be food?

What else, what else.

You can establish a boundary around your practice, with enough practice. My practice is full and yet I was gone for 10 days and had maybe 2 phone calls while I was off, from new patients. I'm not sure how you do this, but it is worth working at. Using your team, using the patient's resources, this is all in there somewhere, as is encouraging independence. I guess we should talk about it more sometime.

What else, what else. I read a good book by Colm Toibin, Brooklyn. It's a post-war book about a nice kid from Ireland who comes to America, leaves her family behind knowing that at most she will see them once a year, traveling by boat. She's here in America for a better life. It's a wonderful novel, rich in character insight. The whole idea of separating from family for a whole year is mind-boggling, isn't it? And yet people used to do it all the time, and many still do.

And I complain about a few months apart from mine.

therapydoc

Golf

We took a drive out to see the family in the 'burbs last Sunday, and had hardly hit the watermelon when my nephew came home very tired and sweaty from his golf game. Kids in their twenties look gorgeous even when they're tired and sweaty.

I'd been having a bad back week, nagging 3 Advil aggravation, so I asked him if he had any spare clubs. Hitting golf balls is a nice way for me to stretch out, work through the muscle strain, an occupational hazard when you sit in an office for hours on end. But I don't have a set of golf clubs.

Which is silly, really, because there's a driving range all of a mile away from my house, and my father and my father-in-law (OBS) each took turns teaching me how to swing a club when I was young and showed some promise. It's one of those things you either take a liking to or you don't, but since it took in my case, this hankering to hit the ball, for their sakes I feel, I should be hitting golf balls every so often.

So I asked my nephew if he had an extra six or a seven iron collecting dust in the garage. I thought I'd give it a try, take a walk over to the driving range later that day, spend five bucks and hit a bucket of balls. Stretch out.

But there are no buckets anymore. Crazy. You buy a card and stick it into a machine and the golf ball rises on cue from the Astro-turf, complete with tee. You lose the stretch you get bending down, putting the ball on the tee. That's 48 bends a bucket, I mean card, lost.

Bored yet?

Do you think it's a boring game?

Honest, I wouldn't know, having never played, never made it past the golfing range, unless you consider Par King (the one with the windmill) golf. But I do see that there can be some real psychological benefits to the sport.

Obviously, to play golf you basically stroll around on parkways, probably whistling. Not all of us, not those who can't whistle, and certainly not people like me, who never made it past the driving range to a genuine golf course, but real golfers.

Wait! Since I don't really play, maybe I can't really write about the benefits of the game! The best I can do is tell you how it feels to hit a golf ball, put that baby up there in flight, watch as it soars 150 feet, or is it yards, except for those times that you don't, when it dribbles three feet onto the Astro-turf in front of you, and you're embarrassed and have to make a decision, one that you make when no one is looking:

Is retrieving a ball you can reach cheating? Stealing?

The therapy:

I used to tell people that anger management is about two things.

(1) muttering, as opposed to yelling, and
(2) breaking stuff at the recycling center.

Muttering is obvious. The energy that would go into swearing or saying something less than kasher,* is still channeled to the lips, but the product is almost inaudible. A person can still use the same facial expressions and words, even, but no one should actually decipher what he's saying. This can still infuriate a partner, however, so it doesn't always work, in which case Think it, don't say it, is the rule, and rethink that, own some of the problem.

Recycling is one of the lesser known interventions in anger management. Ever since the city of Chicago took over the recycling business with blue bags for our cans, bottles and WSJ's (Wall Street Journals) fewer people have had the inclination to smash wine and beer bottles at recycling centers. Recycling centers still reign, however, in the suburbs, featuring imposing iron bins for paper, glass, and aluminum recyclables. There used to be a good one in Evanston.

You can either drop your recyclables into the bins or you can hurl them. No one cares if you hurl an empty bottle of wine or a mayonnaise bottle with all of your might, as long as you hit the inside of the bin safely.

So hey. It's good for the environment. We're into green.

In the sixties we used Styrofoam bats for anger, which by the way, are not recyclable. People with anger issues were assigned sword fights, Styrofoam bats and swords for duels, or they smashed pillows to get their anger out.

As you know, I recommend that people keep their toxic anger to themselves, keep it in, or express it creatively, perhaps nicely, safely or not at all. Bats, even Styrofoam bats, are out. Smash your pillow if you must, but the actual physical enactment of rage probably needs to be toned down, not jacked up.

But recycling! Who can object to recycling?

Still. Maybe learning to think before we talk is a better way to channel anger, listening to words in our heads before saying them aloud. Or better, write them down. Write the letter, don't send it, then write it again. And don't send it.

The expression of anger tends to get people hurt, which is why we've recommended assertiveness all over this blog. You don't need to disrespect people. There's enough bad karma in the world. The family is there to support us, not to bring us down. If you feel like flexing verbal muscle, buy a dictionary. Get better words.

Theoretically, that other way to channel anger isn't so bad. Battling it out in Styrofoam, hurling wine bottles into a recycling bin, even, might I suggest, hitting a few golf balls, can be a fun way to displace, rather, discharge negative emotion. And it's good for the back, hitting golf balls. Or it's bad for the back, depending upon your back. I guess if you're lousy at golf, however, and get frustrated easily, then hitting golf balls defeats the purpose.

We see little children discharge their feelings during play, and what are we, if not big children? Little kids will smash crayons onto their coloring books when they're frustrated, usually for attention. They'll break the whole box. They don't care.

I tell parents that it's good to get kids to talk about their feelings, but it's just as important to teach them to channel arousal, to teach them to run, and skip. Jump. I think it tires them out, too, like hitting a bucket of balls, I mean a card, tires me out.

It's good to mentor kids, to teach them to distract from their negative feelings with gross and fine motor skills, especially if the skills require a little concentration. Bozo's Grand Prize Game is a good one on a rainy day, and it's cheap. The kid tosses ping pong balls into buckets. We used to pitch pennies, try to hit the sidewalk cracks when we were kids. There were fewer shows on television. As soon as kids are engrossed in these types of activities, they forget about smashing crayons.

Their parents can talk to them about their feelings at bedtime. The first order of business for children at any age is to learn to play well, to be a good sport. For most of us it takes practice to get good at anything, and patience.

But if you don't care about winning, really, if all you're after is hitting that sweet spot ten times out of forty-eight (is that so much to ask?) and you like practicing, then you're still in trouble.

You're going to have to drive out to the suburbs to borrow more clubs.

therapydoc

*kosher or kasher can mean clean in certain contexts, or appropriate.