Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)
Beloved Grand Eagle
Call-in Tuesday Dec. 3, Steve Ozanich Book Chapters 18: “Major Personality Types” and 19: “Separation and Rage.”
This Tuesday, Dec. 3, the call-in discussion group will be discussing Chapters 18 (“Personality Types”) and 19 (“Separation and Rage”) in Steve Ozanich's book The Great Pain Deception starting at 9 pm Eastern Time. It lasts an hour, sometimes a little longer. Phone lines will open half an hour early so you can talk to hosts and early callers. Here's how to join the discussion (for detailed instructions, visit www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Connect ):
I was visiting some good friends in their kitchen and while we talked I saw their monthly calendar on the wall and wondered why it looked all-black. I walked a little closer and saw that it had so much written for each day of the month that it looked solid black from a distance.
Their son and daughter were very active teenagers, and the mother taught fourth grade, while the father had an important corporate job. They all had so many appointments scheduled for each day, to be here and there and do this and that, I wondered when they would have time for the basic toilette necessities of life. They also didn’t get along very well and had thought of divorce but decided instead on separation, but after a year of the extra expenses of keeping an apartment for her and the house for him and the kids, they returned to their marriage. The beat went on and their kitchen calendar remained black from a few feet away.
They both were Type T people. Steve says those are hard-driven perfectionists with very high standards who tend to avoid conflict and are reticent in expressing their emotions.
I saw them as an average American family so wrapped up in their lives that they had no time to smell the roses. Too bad they didn’t learn to slow down and smell them because a few years later she died of cancer and the kids were grown up and moved away. The father moved into one room in a retirement home. They had seemed to be a happy family, but life had slipped by them, as it does to so many of us, before we have a chance to realize we’re alive. We may be in pain, but we’re alive. My mother, with arthritis at the age of 94, told me, “I hurt, but life is sweet.”
Life is very sweet. But we can let our personality get in the way of realizing that.
Steve also describes two other personality types. Type A people are “belligerent, impatient, tempestuous, competitive, and hostile.” One of my two bosses is all that and more because he also is a perfectionist’s perfectionist, yet he is not that perfect at all.
Type B people are “reasoned, easygoing, less ambitious, accommodating, cooperative, carefree, and unflappable under stress.” My two best friends of many years are all that and more, just the kind of people you want to be around and be just like. One is even more easygoing. He is a happy person and spreads his sunshine wherever he goes. It is wonderfully “catching.” The other is less outwardly happy-appearing but still projects a strength under stress that is reassuring to others.
Type T people, says Steve, are “narcissistic, internalizing, controlled, and have an easy outward appearance but hide their true feelings from themselves and others, smiling through their pain.” Those personality traits can create problems for themselves.
Another is the INFP personality, which stands for Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving. They are idealists; hard-driven perfectionists with extremely high standards, do not relax well, tend to avoid conflict, are often unaware of their own needs, reluctant to express their emotions, care very much for others, are excellent problem solvers, make loyal friends to others, and their main goal in life is to make the world a better place.
Wow, that all sounds like me, although Steve doesn’t say we INFP people are also handsome and witty. Haha.
Steve says a TMS sufferer can fall into any personality type, but the more common symptom sufferers are the INFPs, the idealists with very high standards. My standards for moral integrity are even higher than the Pope’s.
Steve says that a common complaint of severe symptom sufferers is that they put their own lives and dreams on hold for those around them in a silent and controlled manner. If they are caretakers, they may have TMS because those who they care for never knowledge the sacrifices made for them.
He closes Chapter 18 by cautioning us not to try to be overly thirsty for information. That’s not easy to do in this age of instant information from watching television and going on the Internet.
Today I needed to know why my dishwasher collects water on the floor of the unit after doing a load of dishes. I actually found several answers by a simple Google search and
learned that the unit’s drain plug probably needs cleaning, then was told how to do that.
We can be helped by gathering information but can over-do it. Henry David Thoreau said, “Our life is frittered away by detail” and urged “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.”
I cut down on how much information I want or is needed for me by not watching the news on television. I really don’t need to know about the problems of every state in the union or country in the world. It’s virtually impossible to not know the day’s big events, but we don’t need to fill our minds with everything happening everywhere. Our minds should have enough free space to reflect on being happy, healthy, loving others and God and doing His will.
Steve says “Learning how to stop looking for all the answers is one of many keys to TMS healing. The quest for more knowledge beyond what is needed is, in itself, TMSing and slows deeper understanding.”
In Chapter 19, Steve writes about “Separation and Rage at 26 Months.” He quotes psychiatrist Clancy McKenzie saying that “early separations and early trauma, when an infant is most helpless, sets the stage for enormous rage later in life.” McKenzie says that 99 percent of trauma comes from physical or emotional separation from the mother, as experienced by the infant. “Separation (rejection) at any age can have a profound impact, but the earlier in the brain development the more intense the rage because of helplessness.” The peak age of origin of this most self-condemnation and depression is 26 months.
Steve also says that those who feel they were never abandoned must look even closer. They were born, and so they were abandoned. Abandonment can be looked at in many ways by a child, but it always results in separation anxiety and guilt.
Also, a perceived abandonment in later life can trigger the brain back to the earlier stages of brain development where the first perceived abandonment occurred. Steve says there is some form of residual panic in TMS sufferer from infancy – childhood separation anxiety, perhaps because a mother gives a child less attention when another member orf the family is born.
My own separation anxiety came when I was about eight years old and my parents divorced. My older brother and sister and I remained with our mother but we sorely missed our father. They remarried a year later but the separation damage had already done a number on me. Two years ago my closest friends divorced, and I had felt like I was part of their family. I have no doubt my TMS back pain came as a result of that having triggered the separation anxiety I felt when my parents divorced.
Last night was Thanksgiving and I had relatives and friends over for a roast turkey dinner. A friend brought his two-year-old small black Lab mix. Theo and my Annie had a wonderful time together. After dinner, Theo jumped into my lap and kissed me all over my face and kept it up for a long time. My 12-year-old black Lab Annie had not done that to me in years, but after Theo finally jumped down, Annie climbed into my lap to be held close and petted and told once again (as I do all the time) that I love her. A case of canine separation anxiety? I’m sure of it.
We hope you’ll join the call-in on Tuesday and share your thoughts and experiences about your personality type and separation amxiety, anger, or rage.
Meanwhile, this parting thought.: We can never truly feel separation symptoms if we trust in the promise of our heavenly father who said “I am with you always, even to the end of time.”
This Tuesday, Dec. 3, the call-in discussion group will be discussing Chapters 18 (“Personality Types”) and 19 (“Separation and Rage”) in Steve Ozanich's book The Great Pain Deception starting at 9 pm Eastern Time. It lasts an hour, sometimes a little longer. Phone lines will open half an hour early so you can talk to hosts and early callers. Here's how to join the discussion (for detailed instructions, visit www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Connect ):
- If you're connecting by phone, dial 1 (201) 479-4595 and when prompted enter the pin code 18311499 followed by the pound symbol ( # )
- If you're connecting via your computer (Fuze Meeting), go to www.fuzemeeting.com/fuze/app/48fb7aa8/18311499 and follow the instructions from there.
I was visiting some good friends in their kitchen and while we talked I saw their monthly calendar on the wall and wondered why it looked all-black. I walked a little closer and saw that it had so much written for each day of the month that it looked solid black from a distance.
Their son and daughter were very active teenagers, and the mother taught fourth grade, while the father had an important corporate job. They all had so many appointments scheduled for each day, to be here and there and do this and that, I wondered when they would have time for the basic toilette necessities of life. They also didn’t get along very well and had thought of divorce but decided instead on separation, but after a year of the extra expenses of keeping an apartment for her and the house for him and the kids, they returned to their marriage. The beat went on and their kitchen calendar remained black from a few feet away.
They both were Type T people. Steve says those are hard-driven perfectionists with very high standards who tend to avoid conflict and are reticent in expressing their emotions.
I saw them as an average American family so wrapped up in their lives that they had no time to smell the roses. Too bad they didn’t learn to slow down and smell them because a few years later she died of cancer and the kids were grown up and moved away. The father moved into one room in a retirement home. They had seemed to be a happy family, but life had slipped by them, as it does to so many of us, before we have a chance to realize we’re alive. We may be in pain, but we’re alive. My mother, with arthritis at the age of 94, told me, “I hurt, but life is sweet.”
Life is very sweet. But we can let our personality get in the way of realizing that.
Steve also describes two other personality types. Type A people are “belligerent, impatient, tempestuous, competitive, and hostile.” One of my two bosses is all that and more because he also is a perfectionist’s perfectionist, yet he is not that perfect at all.
Type B people are “reasoned, easygoing, less ambitious, accommodating, cooperative, carefree, and unflappable under stress.” My two best friends of many years are all that and more, just the kind of people you want to be around and be just like. One is even more easygoing. He is a happy person and spreads his sunshine wherever he goes. It is wonderfully “catching.” The other is less outwardly happy-appearing but still projects a strength under stress that is reassuring to others.
Type T people, says Steve, are “narcissistic, internalizing, controlled, and have an easy outward appearance but hide their true feelings from themselves and others, smiling through their pain.” Those personality traits can create problems for themselves.
Another is the INFP personality, which stands for Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving. They are idealists; hard-driven perfectionists with extremely high standards, do not relax well, tend to avoid conflict, are often unaware of their own needs, reluctant to express their emotions, care very much for others, are excellent problem solvers, make loyal friends to others, and their main goal in life is to make the world a better place.
Wow, that all sounds like me, although Steve doesn’t say we INFP people are also handsome and witty. Haha.
Steve says a TMS sufferer can fall into any personality type, but the more common symptom sufferers are the INFPs, the idealists with very high standards. My standards for moral integrity are even higher than the Pope’s.
Steve says that a common complaint of severe symptom sufferers is that they put their own lives and dreams on hold for those around them in a silent and controlled manner. If they are caretakers, they may have TMS because those who they care for never knowledge the sacrifices made for them.
He closes Chapter 18 by cautioning us not to try to be overly thirsty for information. That’s not easy to do in this age of instant information from watching television and going on the Internet.
Today I needed to know why my dishwasher collects water on the floor of the unit after doing a load of dishes. I actually found several answers by a simple Google search and
learned that the unit’s drain plug probably needs cleaning, then was told how to do that.
We can be helped by gathering information but can over-do it. Henry David Thoreau said, “Our life is frittered away by detail” and urged “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.”
I cut down on how much information I want or is needed for me by not watching the news on television. I really don’t need to know about the problems of every state in the union or country in the world. It’s virtually impossible to not know the day’s big events, but we don’t need to fill our minds with everything happening everywhere. Our minds should have enough free space to reflect on being happy, healthy, loving others and God and doing His will.
Steve says “Learning how to stop looking for all the answers is one of many keys to TMS healing. The quest for more knowledge beyond what is needed is, in itself, TMSing and slows deeper understanding.”
In Chapter 19, Steve writes about “Separation and Rage at 26 Months.” He quotes psychiatrist Clancy McKenzie saying that “early separations and early trauma, when an infant is most helpless, sets the stage for enormous rage later in life.” McKenzie says that 99 percent of trauma comes from physical or emotional separation from the mother, as experienced by the infant. “Separation (rejection) at any age can have a profound impact, but the earlier in the brain development the more intense the rage because of helplessness.” The peak age of origin of this most self-condemnation and depression is 26 months.
Steve also says that those who feel they were never abandoned must look even closer. They were born, and so they were abandoned. Abandonment can be looked at in many ways by a child, but it always results in separation anxiety and guilt.
Also, a perceived abandonment in later life can trigger the brain back to the earlier stages of brain development where the first perceived abandonment occurred. Steve says there is some form of residual panic in TMS sufferer from infancy – childhood separation anxiety, perhaps because a mother gives a child less attention when another member orf the family is born.
My own separation anxiety came when I was about eight years old and my parents divorced. My older brother and sister and I remained with our mother but we sorely missed our father. They remarried a year later but the separation damage had already done a number on me. Two years ago my closest friends divorced, and I had felt like I was part of their family. I have no doubt my TMS back pain came as a result of that having triggered the separation anxiety I felt when my parents divorced.
Last night was Thanksgiving and I had relatives and friends over for a roast turkey dinner. A friend brought his two-year-old small black Lab mix. Theo and my Annie had a wonderful time together. After dinner, Theo jumped into my lap and kissed me all over my face and kept it up for a long time. My 12-year-old black Lab Annie had not done that to me in years, but after Theo finally jumped down, Annie climbed into my lap to be held close and petted and told once again (as I do all the time) that I love her. A case of canine separation anxiety? I’m sure of it.
We hope you’ll join the call-in on Tuesday and share your thoughts and experiences about your personality type and separation amxiety, anger, or rage.
Meanwhile, this parting thought.: We can never truly feel separation symptoms if we trust in the promise of our heavenly father who said “I am with you always, even to the end of time.”
