Appreciating the Holidays during the Shittiest Year Ever

By Crabby McSlacker

So the holiday season has arrived, and traditionally this is a time for joy and togetherness. Yet for many of us, this year hardly seems time for celebration.

And I know, this is a health blog, not a political blog. But I feel like I have to acknowledge the elephant in the room---the scary mean orange elephant, the angry beast who defeated the diligent, highly qualified donkey and now rules the world.

These are scary times. It feels too fake and weird to just pretend everything is normal.

We have a president-elect gearing up to destroy our democracy. Not out of malice or twisted ideology. No, Trump is not some epic villain for the ages with a sinister grand plan--he's just arrogant. Ignorant. Entitled. Vindictive. Uninhibited. Mendacious. Greedy. Narcissistic.

Every day comes some fresh outrage, something that would have, in times past, shocked the populace, made bold headlines, brought down administrations. Yet there are never any repercussions. Well, we get funny SNL skits and Samantha Bee rants and Facebook petitions. They makes us feel better momentarily, but we're still facing the same horrific reality a few minutes later.

Am I offending some of you pro-Trump people out there? I'm sorry.  But I'm offended you elected this racist, sexist, irrational, authoritarian, hate-filled monster to lead our country.

But hey, if you supported Trump and are somehow still willing to put up with my occasional rants, you are still most welcome here!

So what's the health angle here?  It's this: bazillions of studies have shown that feelings of gratitude and appreciation are good for us. Cultivating appreciation, even in the midst of political shitstorms, improves our physical and mental health, and makes us far less likely to be assholes to those around us.

So I thought I'd go first:  what are a few things that I'm especially appreciating this year as the holidays roll around?

Quick Trick for Preventing Emotional Meltdowns

image: wikipedia

By Crabby McSlacker

So this is a "Quick Trick" in that it doesn't take too long to implement it, but as usual, I wrote a long-ass blog post to provide some context for it. As regulars know, I am pretty much incapable of getting straight to the point.

And the usual disclaimer applies: this may only work for me and my odd brain.

Plus it's only a shortcut to help you access all the emotional regulation skills you've already mastered as a thoughtful, responsible, adult human. If you don't have them to start with, and you've been blowing off all that personal growth and/or therapy stuff your entire life, it probably ain't gonna work.

It's basically a metaphorical tool I've been using to create an almost instantaneous mindshift in difficult situations. Simplistic and goofy? Sure! But I find it really helps. And there's even a fitness angle too, so I thought I'd pass it along here.

Move It to Lose It

Guest Post By Jan Bono

Crabby is still trying to get her act together after returning from Hong Kong and Bali, waylaid by chores involved packing up for a cross-country relocation.  (And yes, talk about your First World Problems.) So she apologizes for major blog slackitude on her part.  Good thing though that ace contributor Jan Bono has more insights to share about her astounding weight loss journey! Remember you can get her book at “Back from Obesity: My 252-pound Weight-Loss Journey” either in print or on Jan's smashwords page. And the apologetic crab hopes to be back next week!--Crabby

I’ve been roughly “at goal weight” now for several years, but I can vividly recall the monumental effort to sign on the dotted line at our local fitness center. At the time, I was still over 350 pounds, and wanted absolutely nothing to do with public exercise.

I mean seriously, what if someone I knew saw me there? What if I heard snickers from other people working out? How could I possibly justify the expense when I was pretty sure I’d never stick with it for the length of a single 3-month contract?

Holiday Stress? Five Self-Defeating Habits And How to Break 'em

 

Gosh, Isn't This FUN???

Image: Plan 59

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Something Else, or Nothing At All, it's hard not to be at least somewhat affected by the holiday season.  Reminders are everywhere: flashing at us from giant billboards, piled up in displays in every retail outlet, stalking us around the web, cramming our social calendars, tempting us with treats, turning tender tots into greedy tyrants, and swiping all the good parking places.  What are we supposed to be remembering, honoring, accomplishing, celebrating, desiring, and giving this time of year? No worries, we have centuries of tradition and ubiquitous mass media to shove unrealistic and oppressive ideas down our throats help us decide!

Some folks breeze right through all this with nothing but a sense of delight and gratitude. If you're one of those Happy Holiday Campers, then hooray for you! No doubt you can better use the time you'd spend reading this post to do your usual holiday thing, like knitting rifle cozies for an entire division of troops serving overseas, or custom-baking anatomically correct gingerbread cookies for home-bound elderly amputees, or recreating life-sized Nativity Scenes using recycled toothpicks, aluminum cans and hair-clippings donated by local salons. Whatever it is you've got up your busy sleeves, you clearly have the energy and positive attitude to tackle it, so go forth and be happily productive!

But for the rest of us, I've got some "Do As I Say And Not as I Do!" holiday anti-stress tips.  Plus, as a bonus, there's another related post on the same theme by Aimee Gallo over at Vibrance.  And who is Aimee? She's a woman I recently met... at the gym.  Imagine! What are the chances that two people interested in fitness would both end up there?  As it turns out, she's got a great blog full of health, nutrition, and exercise tips. And after you come back from Aimee's place (and please do, ok, it gets ugly here when I start to sulk and pout), you may want to ask yourself: do any of the following five stress-inducing holiday habits sound a tad familiar?

1. Procrastination

Nah, I'm not talking about strategic procrastination, which is a perfectly sensible strategy for dealing with holidays. If you know that you're more efficient if you wait until the last minute, and if you're not tearing your hair out worrying about how you'll get everything done, then by all means, procrastinate up a storm.

But try to avoid the more common, yet clueless sort of procrastination: allowing the idea of all that shopping and mailing and planning and decorating and cooking to get so big in your mind that it overwhelms you into paralysis.

Do you find yourself struggling to get started on your holiday to-do list while others around you are gleefully shouting "all done!" and plopping their smug asses down on the couch to drink spiked eggnog and watch the Grinch steal Christmas for the 87th time?  Wouldn't it be cool to feel as guilt-free and chipper as a Who down in Who-ville for the holiday season, just this once for a nice change of pace?

Well, no brilliant new insights here, because two tried and true bits of anti-procrastination advice are way better than anything I could come up with.

1. Start early and break tasks down into baby steps. Don't worry so much about the big picture, just spend a few minutes here or there you might use checking Facebook updates to start a brainstorming list about gift ideas or menu ideas. Or go browse one nearby store on your lunch hour (if such a thing still exists), or spend a few minutes online with a particular recipient in mind. Make a trip to the basement or attic this evening to find the dusty boxes where the decorations hide. You get the idea. Make the steps small enough not to be scary, and congratulate yourself for everything you cross off the list earlier than you would have last year.

2. Confront perfectionism. The root of procrastination is often not laziness, but fear of making mistakes or coming up short.  Oddly enough though, anxiously waiting until the last minute to tackle holiday preparations--when lines are long, stores are sold out of popular items, flights are booked, friends have made other plans, etc--does not make Holiday Perfection easier to obtain.  Jump in, do your best, and keep in mind that believing you can create the Perfect Holiday is about as helpful as believing Santa Claus is gonna fork over for all your presents squoosh himself down your chimney.  Good luck with either approach to the holidays.

2. High Expectations

These are no problem if every year you have a heartwarming and joyous holiday. If your life is a Normal Rockwell painting, then heck, eat a big slice of apple pie, enjoy your hilarious and kind-hearted relatives, and be sure to laugh together over the zany antics of Fluffy the cat and Rex the dog, neither of whom have ever have fleas, furballs or flatulence!

But is your life a nonstop joyride?  If not, sometimes those lovely shiny expectations of what we should be doing for others, what others should be doing for us, how cheerful we should feel, how our families should behave, how clean and beautiful our homes should be, how bosses should schedule shifts over the holidays... all these “shoulds” we carry with us can lead to hair-pulling anxiety or bitter disappointment. And yet it’s so hard to let go! Even if Uncle Larry has gotten drunk off his ass six out of the last seven family gatherings and proceeded to knock over knickknacks, insult your daughter’s Asian boyfriend, and crack dirty jokes in front of the kids, we still feel we should invite him because damn it, he’s family, and double-damn it, he should know how to behave by now.

The answer to overly high expectations is both easy to figure out, and really freakin' hard to do:

Explore, challenge, and let go of some of the “shoulds” that aren’t working for you. Should you always be the one to host a holiday dinner every year because you are uniquely qualified by being born with XX instead of XY chromosomes? Do you spend weeks coming up with thoughtful and surprising gifts for unimaginative relatives who always buy you socks, hurting your feelings every year? Do you cruise into malls during the busiest shopping days of the year and feel personally outraged when lines are long and overworked sales clerks are gruff because shopping should be a pleasant experience?

Maybe this year, challenge just one of your stress-inducing expectations. Aim low, expect random sucky stuff to happen, and enjoy those precious moments when nothing's going wrong!

3.Lack of Boundaries

There are lot of extra demands during the holidays, some reasonable, some ludicrous, and some fine in theory but horrific in practice. One of the first obstacles you may run into after successfully Lowering Your Expectations of Yourself (#2) will be dealing with the rest of the world, which may not be in full agreement with your shiny new anti-stress agenda. So, do you get to choose your own priorities?  Or are you going to feel obliged to appease the people who are the most obnoxious, entitled, overly sensitive or persistent and then pay for it with your sanity?

To keep yourself from going nuts and honor your own priorities, it helps to get familiar with the word “No.” Or, more politely, “No thank you, I really can’t this year, but thanks so much for thinking of me!” To be repeated over and over over, without further explanation, as often times as necessary.

However, lots of folks think this sounds like a great idea and yet can’t for the life of them make themselves say something like that out loud to another human.

So what are the next best options for declining demands if unapologetically honest refusal isn't your style?

1. Hedge.  Don't let yourself get caught by a surprise request.  Make it a rule to never to commit to something unless you're absolutely sure you have the time and desire to do it.  Try to leave yourself an out. “Sounds great, but I'm not sure if I'm free.  I need to double-check with my husband/babysitter/boss/voodoo priestess, and then I'll get back to you!"  Then give yourself a chance to really think through if you want to or not.

2. Lie! Yeah, sure, honesty is a better bet from a karma perspective, but hell, I say if it’s white lie that saves you from chasing random strangers down the street with a cleaver in your hand from a bad case of Post Traumatic Holiday Stress syndrome, it’s a white lie worth telling. Invent conflicting social events, illness, injuries, work crises, alien abduction, obscure religious injunctions, strange voices whispering to you in the night… whatever it takes to you the space and time you need to survive the holidays in relatively good spirits.

4. Rationalization

One thing that’s awesome about holidays is that they give us permission to relax our usual sensible rules about working, eating, drinking, spending, flirting, sleeping late, exercising etc. Have some champagne! Have second helpings for dinner! Stay up until 3am! Buy that big screen tv for your family you’ve been wanting for so long!

However, there’s a big difference between a “special occasion” and an “alternate reality.”

If your holiday season extends nonstop from pre-halloween Snickers stockpiling to post New Years Day football festival leftovers, you're probably going to want to inject some common sense into the process. Either that or alter the laws of physiology, psychology, economics and physics. Even if you tell yourself you’re “celebrating,” isn’t it hard to feel truly joyous knowing you’re piling up guilt, regret, debt, organ damage, low-self esteem and excess poundage?

So whats the answer? Again, easier said than done: 

Moderation and Damage Control!  Insisting on perfection is party-poopy and pointless, but so is throwing a holiday “on/off” switch and pretending normal rules don’t apply. Remember all the stuff you normally do to exert self control? Don’t toss it all out the window.  Have a "night off," then get back to your normal routine the next day.  You'll feel better, and will enjoy the next "night off" more than if you make the holidays one continuous excuse to indulge.

Also, think about adding as many positive healthy things you can to the mix: get more exercise, vegetables, meditation, water, tea, nature, music, hot baths, laughter… and then you’ll feel slightly less like snarfing up every single evil temptation that the holiday season offers up.

5. Commercialization

We’re besieged daily during this time of year with messages equating love, happiness, excitement, loyalty, gratitude, confidence, intelligence, excitement… with the crap we buy. Seriously, we can’t think of other ways to show affection besides extravagant presents? Do we really measure self esteem by the number of karats in a diamond earring or the vintage of the wine we pour at a holiday dinner?

Many folks get so caught up in the material aspects of the holiday that they feel financially stressed, inadequate, grouchy, or martyred.

This year, is it going to be different? Let’s Occupy Santa’s Toyshop! Tell that tedious old fart to send the poor elves home early, go easy on all the Christmas list promises, and let the rest of us spend more time enjoying friends and family and less time shopping for them.

Make sure to build in a little time for yourself, too--do something restorative to take down your stress levels so that you can be present and appreciative with Loved Ones.  Sadly, you don't get nearly as much "credit" for getting together with relatives at holidays if you spend the whole time snapping at them or feeling put-upon and resentful.

Another holiday tradition to consider is the notion of  giving to those less fortunate. Go volunteer at a soup kitchen, or help round up presents for underprivileged kids, or even stop in and drop off some cookies to that annoying but lonely old lady next door who lets her poodle poop on your lawn. She may not even thank you for it, but you’ll feel better. (At least until the next time you find dog shit on your shoe).

A Few Random Stress Resources

Mayo Clinic has another round up of ways to prevent holiday stress.

Kaiser Permanente has some free guided visualization downloads and doesn’t seem to lock out nonmembers. There are also free guided mediation downloads at Fragrant Heart.

And of course I have to mention my favorite anti-stress geek/guru/role-model Rick Hanson, who has a free newsletter, as well as anti-stress books, CD's and other resources. Oh, and I can't leave out Sounds True, the company that let me take Rick's course for free--they also have a bunch of free meditation downloads.

So does anyone else get stressed during the holidays? Got any tips or horror stories?

Hypochondria Lite

Cartoon by Al Bar

Anyone else out there have a slight tendency toward hypochondria?

No, not the sort where your life is one long parade of ominous symptoms, visits to specialists, and appointments for tests, re-tests, and re-re-tests--because maybe the results say you're fine, but suppose the lab accidentally mixed up your samples with some healthy person's?

That's the fullblown, clinical kind. I'm talking about the more occasional, amateur type hypochondria. Hypochondria "Lite."

The sort of hypochondria where, just hypothetically, you might find one night you're seeing some sort of weird crescent shaped thing in your eye, and you remember something about the symptoms of detached retinas and the dire importance of seeking immediate medical attention for them. And then you convince yourself that because you are not going to roust your sleeping spouse and go to the emergency room, you will probably wake up the next morning blind in one eye. But then instead you wake up the next morning and you're fine! And so you forget all about it.

That kind of hypochondria.

Here's a quick diagnostic test:

One day you notice a reddish pimply-looking bump on your leg. That bump is most probably:

a. A pimple.

b. The beginning stages of a potentially deadly flesh eating bacteria you must have picked up at the gym, since you've never had a pimple on your leg before in your entire life. However, since it's conceivable that it's something less ominous, you might wait a few days before checking with a doctor.

c. Malignant melanoma in the final stages. You make an appointment with your doctor and insist she see you as soon as possible, but you also call your attorney to update your will because you know you are a goner.

If you are an "A" person, congratulations, you are normal! If you are a "C" person, we need to talk--meet me at the bottom of the post.

But what about all of us "B" people, the Amateur Hypochondriacs? (And yes, both examples were me--I did worry I had a detached retina, and feared I'd contracted MRSA from my gym this summer until the pimple went away).

We amateurs are little worry-wartish about our health and occasionally think we're going to die when we're not--but we don't freak out nearly often enough or severely enough that it screws up our lives.


Saving Grace: Being a Lazy Slacker

The only reason I haven't humiliated myself in doctor's offices from coast to coast with my exaggerated health fears is because I hate going to the doctor. So I take a "wait and see" attitude--even if while I'm waiting and seeing I'm also seriously considering the possibility that I'm dying. But year after year, the weird bumps and aches and numb spots etc have never turned out to be anything fatal. So this strategy has been surprisingly effective.

Here's a particularly weird example: I was out running one morning and when I finished my run, I had lost the ability to remember about 75% of my vocabulary.

Not just abstract words like "abstemious" or "profligate." I couldn't think of basic words like "muffin" or "blueberry" or "egg" (it was breakfast time) or "scared" (which I was) or "stroke," which I was pretty sure I was having.

This bout of aphasia lasted maybe half an hour. And then, wham, a headache. I almost never get headaches. But fortunately, my words came back. (I'm kinda attached to them).

But before I sought medical attention... I had a vague recollection that my mother had a similar episode of not being able to remember words, and that it hadn't been a stroke but something far less scary. So I called her up (once I regained my ability to speak). I asked her what the heck she'd been diagnosed with.

Her answer? A migraine.

Did you know that one symptom of a migraine is aphasia? Well, I didn't, but I sure as hell do now. So it was yet another 911 call I was glad I didn't make.


Good Reasons for Being a Bit of a Worry Wart

I think anyone who spends a fair amount of time reading about health on the web is at least at some risk for health-related anxiety. With access to more medical information that we know what to do with, it's easy to start with a weird pain in your jaw and end up with a bad case of cyberchondria.

Part of the problem is that so many awful, fatal diseases start with vague symptoms that everyone gets all the time. And if you read the "warning signs," many articles will tell you to run off and check with your doctor right away.

Say you're experiencing a bit of fatigue, or you have a headache, or you've lost some weight, or you've got swollen lymph glands, or you're feeling a bit bloated or light-headed or your feet are numb or you're nauseated. Could be nothing--or, depending on the symptom, it could be a heart attack or ovarian cancer or multiple sclerosis or all kinds of serious things. How can we not be a little bit paranoid?

And no doubt some of you have paid attention to vague symptoms, got yourself to a doctor, and saved your own life by catching a potential fatal illness in it's early, treatable stages. Do not read this post and stop doing that!

But I just have too many transient symptoms that have never, ever meant anything. If followed all the advice I've read about when to seek medical attention, I'd be at the doctor's office every damn day of my life. My solution: I don't go in, but I keep tabs on the symptom and freak out a bit, especially if it's something new and weird.

It always goes away again. So far, so good--I'm still alive!

Unfortunately though, I know folks who ignored innocuous symptoms and it turned out to be Something Bad. So I really don't know what the answer is. Serious diseases are pretty darn rare. But if lots of Weird Things are going on, and not going away, then go get it checked out. Don't worry if your doctor thinks your a whiny worry-wart. Unless this pattern seems to happen to you a LOT.

What If Worries About Your Health Are Interfering With Your Life?

You can get help! If you are frequently afraid you have a serious illness even when doctors assure you you're perfectly fine--you don't have to suffer with this type of anxiety anymore. It's treatable. Studies are finding cognitive-behavioral therapy helps a lot, and that Paxil can be effective too. (But since all drugs have side effects, I might investigate the CBT first.)

Besides me and Bossy, is there anyone else out there who sometimes thinks they have dire medical disorders when in reality, they are really Perfectly Fine? Or is it something you don't worry about?

[Did this post sounded annoyingly familiar? Sorry! It is indeed a re-run while I'm on vacation. Be back soon with new posts!]

Personal Day

This is to announce that Crabby is taking a "personal day" today.

Yep, I'm taking off from the blog in order to fly cross-country on personal business***, so I'm gone, but it's not quite vacation. And I hate hate hate to fly. I'd actually rather be home surfing the web for health news and fielding PR pitches for vitamin water than sitting in an airplane... go figure!

But anyway, it's also a "personal day" in the sense that I did an interview with the nice folks at A Weight Lifted, and they're running it today over at their blog.

Now if you're anything like me, you might have a slight resistance to clicking the link. Because you came HERE, and now I'm sending you SOMEWHERE ELSE for today's post. I know I hate to follow a blogger over to a guest post elsewhere. And I have a cable modem, so it's not even about loading time... it's the principle of the thing! People shouldn't be wandering all over the web making you chase after them, dagnabbit!

Anyway, sorry about that. But if you don't mind clicking over to A Weight Lifted for the Crabby McSlacker interview, they're very nice folks over there and they ask fun questions! Remember Marsha, the Dietitian with Dark Dirty Secrets? That's where she blogs.

And as to my "personal business," it's one of those things that's really interesting if you're the person actually conducting the business, but not so interesting if you're not. But if you're bored this morning and want to know what it is...

***Crabby's Personal Business, Explained:

We might be buying a condo.

See, once upon a time, the Lobster and I had a home in California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. But we sold it and downsized into a condo in Provincetown, Massachusetts--one of our favorite places on earth.

The problem? Winter time. In freezing-ass cold weather, Provincetown is not such a favorite place anymore. It's not only cold but lonely. Almost nothing is open and only a few hardy souls hang around.

We don't do hardy.

We are aware that some people, on contemplating a move from a year-round home to a summer place, might think about winter plans before selling their house. But we decided hey, it's a good time to sell in CA, so what the heck! We'll take it a year at a time.

Last winter we stayed with relatives in the SF Bay Area, and this coming winter it looks like we have a house-sitting arrangement lined up in our old Rockridge neighborhood. Hooray!

But at some point we'd like to have a more permanent winter home. So we're attempting to buy a condo in San Diego where it's warmer than the Bay Area, but still close enough for frequent family visits. We found a place we are very excited about (in Hillcrest, near Balboa Park) and put an offer on it. However, we are planning to rent it out for a year or so until we're sure we can actually afford to live in it.

So I need to fly out and make sure the place is not radioactive, or infested with rats or rattlesnakes, or riddled with toxic mold, or located next to a meth lab or a vampire lair or something.

Be back sometime Wednesday morning. Thanks for your patience!

--Crabby

Swine Flu: Why You Should Panic

photo: ChrisBravoTown

So Swine Flu has been in the news a bit lately, have you noticed?

There are some ominous signs out there that this new strain of H1N1 virus may become responsible for a horrible unstoppable global pandemic--the stuff of history books and horror movies.

Or... it might not.

None of the experts, as of this writing, claim to know what the deal is yet. It's too early, and flu viruses are unpredictable. A helpful quote to keep in mind: "If you've seen one flu pandemic, you've seen one flu pandemic."

So it's natural to wonder: is all this hoopla in the media really justified? Should we all be worried about catching and/or dying from Swine Flu?

The short answer: Yep, it's definitely time to panic!


Why now, when there's still so much we don't know? Well, here are Five Good Reasons to start seriously Freaking Out about Swine Flu.

1. Flu Pandemic News: It's A Great Break From Lolcats.

If you're online and trying to avoid doing actual constructive work, there are only so many times a day you can visit your favorite blogs and sites without starting to get a little bored. But now with the swine flu outbreak, you just have to work up enough anxiety so that you Need to Know Every Breaking Development. Voila! You have something new and scary and morbidly fascinating to click on every few minutes.

Because at least for the moment, the disease is spreading, so you can fuel your sense of fear and dread and horrified curiosity every time new cases are discovered. You can find maps, read first-hand accounts, and analyze the political and economic implications of the outbreak. You can choose from a large variety of experts either making dire predictions or offering calm reassurance, whichever spin you prefer.

(Note: One good source for info is Effect Measure; there's always the Center for Disease Control; and HealthBolt also has a round-up of good swine flu links. But it is not exactly hard to find Swine Flu news. Just go to any major news site and click, click, click to your heart's content.)

Those of you who can't work up enough worry to care? Sorry, time to go back to your cute kitteh pictures.

there will always be Lolcats

2. Washing Your Hands Is A Good Idea Anyway!

The more worried you are about catching something potentially deadly, the more likely you are to pay better attention to those Health Experts recommendations about frequent hand washing. As well as those lectures about not touching your face or rubbing your eyes or brushing itchy strands of hair off your forehead unless you've just washed your hands. So even if it turns out there's no epidemic after all, a nice sense of panic will make you much less likely to catch some other unpleasant but less notorious bug than could still make you really miserable.

3. Panic is A Bonding Experience

Most things people get really worked up about are either too personal to share with casual coworkers (the painful details of your divorce, for example), or they're controversial and might cause disagreement (your feelings about corporate bailouts or legalizing drugs or universal health care or whatever).

However, very few people are in favor of massive illness and death. You can pretty much assume that it's safe to share your worries if you have them and no one's going to get offended. And if things do get worse? Oddly enough, people who are scared for their lives often pull together and act much more reasonably and generously than they do in ordinary times!

So keep this simple trick in mind if any of the people you have to deal with on a daily basis are irritating asshats: just whip up a little frenzied fear that a scary awful bug is going to sweep through your office and strike random victims... it could make even the most obnoxious coworker seem suddenly way less annoying!

4. Panicked Overreaction Makes A Great Cocktail Party Story

Once the danger is over, you can tell funny stories about the case loads of face masks and hand sanitizer you stashed in your basement during the Great Swine Flu Scare of 2009. Anxious types who have, in the past, done things like stockpiled duct tape and garbage bags and iodine pills in the aftermath of 9-11, or who hoarded canned goods and cash for when all the world's computers were going to crash in the beginning of the new millennium... well, these folks always tell the best humorous anecdotes at parties. The cheerfully neurotic raconteurs are always more fun to listen to than the smug "I knew from the beginning there was nothing to worry about" types.

5. Er, We Could Actually End Up Having a Swine Flu Pandemic

In which case you will have gotten your panicking done way ahead of schedule, and will be all exhausted and unsurprised and relatively calm while those who didn't think it was going to be a big deal will be freshly reeling.


But What If Panic Just Isn't Your Thing?

I suppose you could just console yourself with the fact that (1) it's probably still really unlikely that anything bad will happen to you personally; and (2) other than take sensible precautions, there's not a lot you can do to stop the spread of swine flu, properly panicked or not. So if you'd rather leave the freaking out to people who actually enjoy it, I suppose being all calm and collected is probably OK too... Ya Big 'Ol Party Poopers.


What about you folks, worried about swine flu yet?

Yeah, but what if the house burns down?

[By Merry. Not assisted by any strange British film directors. Honest.]

Pretty, pretty... ouch...

Awhile ago, I wrote about not using a regular treadmill in my older house because I was afraid of electrical problems. Many people said that they didn't worry about it. Just plug the electrical appliance in. Whatever.
Me, I'm always "Yeah, but it's old wiring. What if the house burns down?"
Them, "When it happens, then worry about it."
I can't do that. I'm always visualizing the worst possible scenario and trying to decide how I'll handle it if it occurs.

Example: I was being a good Merry and cutting vegetables at the kitchen counter. (Yes Mom, I was using a cutting board.) I dropped a knife and it fell to the floor next to my foot. Instantly, my mind conjures up the scenario: what if it had fallen onto my foot? What if it struck a major vein and I started bleeding all over the place? If it were the left foot I could still drive to the hospital using my right, but what if..." And so on, and on.

Sometimes I enjoy the ride when my imagination starts to wander, but this tendency to extrapolate disaster can also be hard on the body.

Visualizing a negative scenario produces a physiological response in the body. The other day had a whole argument visualized in my head, sprung up from something trivial at the grocery store. The original incident was not at all negative but by the time I had extrapolated to the Most Negative Scenario, it was -- in my mind -- a full flung major dramatic scene. Found myself clenching my teeth and tensing my muscles -- over nothing. And I do mean nothing. I had imagined the whole argument, I knew it was a fictitious experiment in What If, and still my body responded with physical fight-or-flight response.

Most of the time it's just a game I play to pass the time, but I'm not sure I should treat it too lightly. I might end up being negative all the time. I want to try using this force for good, and think of the most Wonderful Case Scenario. What if I bend down to pick up the knife and see a $100 bill lying tucked up in the corner under the kitchen cabinet? What if I then use that money to buy a fancy new outfit, which I'm then wearing the next day when I run across this incredibly gorgeous man who takes me out to lunch... on his yacht...

Well, that sort of thing, anyway.

There are many examples that aren't so... far fetched well, anyway, there are a lot of examples. The What If game is especially popular when used with visualization.

Professional athletes do positive visualization stuff all the time. One example that springs to mind is the diver Greg Louganis refusing to watch a videotape of his hitting his head on the diving board. He didn't want that image in his mind.

It helps other people too. Stroke patients often have difficulty using a regular treadmill. In Britain, a treadmill has been adapted to display moving images to the person using it. The patient views the different images (mountain scenes, forests, cities,) as if they were walking through the virtual landscape. Patients are fooled into thinking they are walking slowly which encourages them to walk faster.

Wendy Powell, a former chiropractor who created this treadmill at the University of Portsmouth, claims "in some cases movement has been improved by 20% and users feel less pain compared to usual methods.... We're effectively fooling the brain and the body."

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who visualize killing someone when they're playing video games (don't see how that is "not a bad thing"). It's not hard to find studies claiming that video games cause anti-social behavior. What makes me curious is that most of these studies focus on the effect of virtual aggression on young 'children and young adults.' I'd be willing to bet that the effects would be similar on older people.

I think What If is useful in a whole lot of scenarios.... trying to improve your running pace, reinforcing the willpower when you're faced with "just one more piece" of tiramisu... lots of good stuff. The Fit Shack ran a post about how What If thinking can affect weight loss.

According to Wikipedia, the word tiramisu translates as "pick-me-up."

But if visualizing something can affect how your body reacts, then I sure as hell don't want to play the What If game when I'm holding a knife.

Yes, I know Hitchcock made a lot of money playing What If...

This week I'm going to try balancing a negative scenario, with a positive one.

If you train your body, why not train your mind as well? What else were you planning to do with it?

Crash and Burn

Mayday! Mayday!

[By Crabby]

(Note: This is one of two posts today, the "real" one is coming up soon.)

So have you folks discovered the blog Elastic Waist yet? If you haven't checked it out, you definitely should.

I love Kim and Weetabix and Anne, and the whole crew over there. They're hilarious, and they manage to combine lots of useful information about food and fashion and fitness with positive messages about women's self image and size acceptance and all that cool stuff. Plus there's a lot of entertaining celebrity gossip, swearing, snark, and general outrageousness. What's not to like?

Given how much I admire the professionalism and general kick-ass awesomeness of Elastic Waist, I'm always shocked that they take the time to be so nice to funky little blogs like Cranky Fitness.

So recently Elastic Waist gave me an opportunity to talk about Cranky Fitness! But due to a misunderstanding, my being a total moron, I ended up being unprepared for the phone call.

You know that nightmare you have where you're on stage and you don't know your lines and so you start just saying things at random? (OK, so maybe not everyone has that nightmare). Anyway, that's kind of what happened.

I burbled and babbled and made no sense. Here was this great opportunity to introduce people to the blog, and I just said things that weren't funny and I sounded completely psychotic! Oh, and I said "Um" a lot--like, um, every other, um, word. The Elastic Waist folks did the best they could, and were very nice about it. They put up amusing photos in the background and edited like crazy, but they couldn't hide the fact that I was a blithering idiot.

Sigh.

So here's the dilemma: while I don't want people to actually witness my idiocy, it occurs to me that just ignoring it on the blog is kind of rude to people who were so very nice to me! I do want to acknowledge the great site that Elastic Waist is, and the great job Kim does in hosting the Daily Special.

So check out the Daily Special! Just not the one I was in.

Has anyone else ever embarrassed themselves in an interview or other stressful public speaking situation? Did you eventually recover your dignity and self-esteem at some point?

(And do stay tuned for the next post, it's much better than this one!)

Don't Worry, Be Dead

[By Crabby]

Oh No! Bad Things Happening in A Foreign Language!

Having just written a post defending the Power of Negative Thinking, I was quite (perversely) happy to come across this recent study suggesting that anxious older women actually live longer than mellow ones.

Nervous Nellies of the world, rejoice!

If you're an older woman and have a somewhat anxious disposition, maybe now you can go ahead and ignore those youngsters when they say: "Chill, granny. Don't worry, be happy!" Go ahead and panic over every new little ache and pain and scurry off to the doctor if you want. ("Ouch, my foot hurts--maybe it's toenail cancer!") Apparently all that worry-wartishness actually has a protective effect.

However, for guys it was different. Anxious older fellas tended to croak earlier than non-anxious ones. Sorry, guys.

The finding about the older women seemed kind of unlikely, but it was actually based on a 15 year study of 1,000 seniors and didn't look to be obviously half-assed. Still, I won't be surprised if another one contradicts it next week.

As a middle aged person with Worrywartish Tendencies, I'm hoping it's good news for me even if I don't entirely trust it. But at least it's an nice break from that constant tiresome message that carefree types are always better off and so all us cautious folks should forever strive to lighten up.

Heh heh heh heh heh.

Note: I don't mean to minimize the completely debilitating kind of clinical anxiety that makes leading a normal life difficult. If you've got that kind, you should think about getting help. I'm talking more about the "Quirky Character in a Woody Allen Movie" kind of anxiety.

So what do you guys think, does this study make any sense at all? Or does it sound like the kind soon to be followed by "whoops, we took a new look at the data we were totally f*cking wrong the first time?"

And do any of you have Worrywartish tendencies or is it just me?