Probably my older sister is the one who let out the secret ingredient found in vanilla.  If not, I’m sure I’m blamed the missing bottle of flavoring on her like I did most everything.  Learning that vanilla contained a lot of alcohol, my eleven-year-old hoodlum friends and I decided to have a party.  The vanilla coke bonanza came with a drawback.  While baker’s vanilla smells wonderful, an actual full teaspoon taken at once brings on the gag response.  But, no worry.  We were determined to experience intoxication.  We got around the taste by dissolving the teaspoon of vanilla into quart-sized glasses of Coke and ice.  And we all “became” rolling-around-on-the-floor smashed….Right.

“Which is more important?  The world as it exists?  Or the world you THINK exists, the one you are making up and responding to?”

Well, of course, our lives are determined more by the twisted reality we’ve made up than the actual facts.  How else can we account for gamey first marriages or engagements, and the fact that we only wear the front ten percent of the clothes in our closets?

We humans are reality creating machines.  The next several entries will focus on easy-to-see ways our responses are determined by an environment constructed to satisfy our fears and hopes.

When a person who is into voodoo is given a curse, he or she is more likely to fall ill.  But, responding to a distorted world isn’t always bad.  A couple of decades ago, when ADHD was young, the distractibility of children was attributed to either sugar or preservatives in the diet.  Later the connection was disproved.  And yet, the children whose mothers’ monitored what they ate actually improved.  The act of monitoring in some way lent a placebo effect.

Many studies have demonstrated that pain can be somewhat relieved when the patient is given a sugar pill believed to be a narcotic.  The “medicine” is even more effective when you tell the patient, “We have to be careful not to give you too much of this drug.  It’s very powerful.”

Personally?  I’m all-happy an into placebo meds.  Let’s take headache medicine.  I walk right past the Walgreen’s knock-off stuff every time.  I’m an expert and I’m not falling for cheap imitations of the real “super” medication.  I pay four times as much for Excedrin.  And not just any Excedrin either.  I hunt down the best, most effective pills.  There was a day when I settled for the plain white pills.  But, I’m not sticking with an old model when a new, more effective tablet comes out.  No more pansy white pills once the green capsules , the Express Gels, hit the shelf.  Now, who wouldn’t want relief as fast as possible?

And then, just when I’d found the pinnacle of pills, these geniuses of headache relief marketing came out with bright red capsules with the white stripes!  My chronic inflammatory diseased fingers felt better just holding the bottle.  Oh, what’s that you say?  The ingredients are the same?  Pa-shaw.   

Tomorrow.  The Placebo Hotel Room….What Emotional Decisions Passing for “Thoughts” Direct Your Actions?…continues.

The young psychology student came to me with a question. “Do you, as an experienced psychologist, think there is any value in reading the works of Sigmund Freud?”   I said, I thought so, but I can be entertained reading the back of a juice box, so I wouldn’t take my word as the final say.

She explained her reason for asking.  She’d been on a plane to New York reading her first real text on personality development which happened to focus on the theories of Sigmund Freud. The subject matter and new ideas had her excited about her chosen field of study.  As the plane taxied into the JFK terminal, her seatmate, whom we shall call Killjoy, asked her what she’d been reading. 

The Lady Who Loved Freud spilled forth with enthusiasm, sharing a couple of highlights.  Her seatmate, a Gentleman’s Quarterly dressed fellow (Why is the culprit messing with our world…always dressed better than we are?)…the sophisticated appearing man said, “Well, I guess some non-scientific people still read that kind of fluff.”

The Lady Who “Maybe” Loved Freud said to me, “I’m asking you because his remark took the edge off my mood. I started thinking maybe I’m not intellectual enough to ever be a psychologist.”

Whoa. 

The movie Inception is about a team of experts who can access your subconscious using secret sedatives and gadget machines.  Once into your subconscious, the team can “steal” your thoughts. The services of the “thought stealers” are bought by corporations who want to get a jump on impending company decisions and make a killing.

The thought stealing process is difficult for DiCaprio and his team to perform, but there is an even higher level of service offered.  This service is more complex and trickier and involves “planting” an idea or thought.  The thought plant technique used is a way to win the corporate wars.

As is said several times in the movie, once an idea is planted it multiples on its own in the brain.  “The idea grows and grows until it defines you or destroys you.” (Best guess at exact words.)

What I kept asking myself throughout the movie was, “Why are these guys going to all this trouble when planting an idea that grows and grows and changes behavior is really quite simple?”

This is not a movie review.  Just one freakish dame in cargo shorts sitting on the second row…thinking.

Remember the folks who built shelters and bought stockpiles of food to survive the turn of the millennium?  And what about the Heaven’s Gate followers who consented to castration and suicide as a way to meet up with the mother ship?  And Hitler?  Who hasn’t wondered how it was possible to convince Nazi underlings to load humans into freight train cars and worse?

The “Inception” technique was nowhere around.

Let’s go closer to home.  The girl who ends up battling anorexia switches to a food denial and compulsive exercise after a Saturday night when she and her friends are loading into a car and she is told to sit in front since she’s not “small.”  What about those careless words your special person said during an argument years ago, the cutting remarks you bring back to torture yourself when you’re down?  What about a criticism that remains with you as a secret fear….What if I am selfish like Mother said?

Sometimes an upset stranger in a passing car can do the trick.  Or, we can come up with thoughts, all by ourselves, that grow like bacteria.  What about the idea that “I not happy now, but when I lose the weight I’ll be happy….I’d love to write a memoir, but I’m not smart enough…I’d love to travel, but it’s too expensive for someone like me….”    

Maybe we step on the scales…or run into a friend who looks so much better than we do…or overhear an invitation to lunch when we haven’t been invited…or speak with a friend whose kids are incredibly successful…

And, thus, Mysteryshrink.com is about how to possibly make a dent in managing our emotions, thoughts, and actions…a little better…not collosal better like Budha or women who look good in shorts and cowboy boots….just a tiny bit better.  I’m in.