J. Cafesin is a Creative Director, an author of riveting, mind-bending fiction, and a MarCom specialist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a native Californian (Silicon Valley), and the founder of Lean Startup Marketing Entrepreneurial Workshops—the step-by-step process to marketing an idea, or developing product, for profit. J. Cafesin also is a Stanford educator, in Copywriting and Startup Marketing.
With everything given something, not the same thing, is owed.
With everything given—a kindness, one’s time, efforts on your behalf—you owe that person.
I write it three times because most people DON’T GET IT, or worse, refuse to believe it. It’s easier to receive than reciprocate. Denying or ignoring reciprocity doesn’t make the debt disappear; it undermines the relationship.
Just got off the phone with a friend. After describing my husband’s failure in planning our recent trip, I added he ‘owed me’ for 23 years planning unique family vacations every year.
My friend retorted, “I hate that. You don’t ‘owe’ your partner.”
Yes. You do!
With everything given something is owed.If not equitably, the perceived partnership is really a dictatorship.
Gray divorce is trending because the wife spent the last 20+ yrs of her life raising the kids, cleaning the house, shopping and cooking the meals for the family while working full-time, and she’s done being the unpaid labor force for a man who never learned to reciprocate.
Like it or not, mutuallybeneficial, fulfilling relationships are reciprocal.
Reciprocity goes beyond just marriage.
If your adult child has spent 20+ years being volatile, demanding, emotionally abusive, you may ‘love’ them, but it’s also likely you’re tolerating them.
Relationships without reciprocity become endurance.
With everything given, something is owed. If this paradigm is not understood, and PRACTICED in relationships, resentment festers, and corrodes over time. The union becomes fragile with the [often unspoken, or consciously recognized] weight of hostility, leading to divorce, estrangement from family, ending friendships, even work relationships.
I told my friend I spent three months every year planning our vacations on a shoestring budget. Countless times over the last 29 yrs I’d asked him to plan a romantic getaway for us, but he did only once—this recent trip, which I instigated, and reminded him to plan for over a year.
With everything given, something is owed. Something is owed, but not [necessarily] the same thing. Reciprocity need not be identical, but must be proportional to achieve equity in relationships. And true intimacy—sharing open communication, connection, trust—requires equity. Had my husband invested the same amount of time and focused energy as I do planning our trips, we likely wouldn’t have ended up on Hawaii in a cramped, shoddy, bug-infested Airbnb above a bar. (No resentment there…)
My parents’ marriage of 49 yrs was not reciprocal. It was a hierarchy.
I never heard my mom say a bad word about my dad until two weeks before she passed. Dying of cancer, she lay on her side of their California King spewing her bottled rage towards her misogynistic narcissist of a husband.
My dad was ‘king of his castle,’ but my mother paid the bills, did the taxes, and worked full-time while raising three kids. She planned the vacations, threw the parties, purchased the presents, hosted holidays, shopped and cooked most meals, even did much of the clean-up. She attended his business functions and soirées—‘his arm piece wearing the requisite sunshiny face,’ she’d said during her hate-filled rant.
My dad went to work and was home for dinner most nights. After he ate the meal we served him, he went into his office and watched TV, or read. Oh, and in a grand display, he carved the turkey my mom bought, cooked and served at Thanksgivings.
He left her lonely ‘doing his own thing’ in his free time during his working years, and in retirement. She gravitated to her network of friends (as so many married women do!) who extended their Time to her, as she did to them. They spoke often, met up for meals weekly, traveled together on vacations to far away places— leaving my father lonely too.
Ultimately, neglecting to invest the time and energy my mom had into him served neither of them.
Reciprocity isn’t complicated. It’s recognizing the amount of Time others invest in you—directly, through their time and attention; and indirectly by making your life easier.
It may be as simple as your timely response to a text or email from a friend or family member (since no one likes to wait for a reply).
A child’s reciprocity for a parent’s investment in them may be demonstrating respect, gratitude, cooperation, affection over time.
Husband/wife, parent/child, siblings, friends, associates, practicing Time for Time builds trust, connections, can even repair broken relationships. When we give our time—our most valued possession—we show we care.
Invest your Time in preserving, even strengthening any partnership by taking the following steps (in order!):
Compromise. *Steps 2 – 4 can be more easily achieved by remembering #1.
With everything given, something is owed. Not the same thing, but something, in equal measure. This is the price of obtaining, and maintaining connections, friendships, love.
How to build better relationships with partners, kids, friends and colleagues…
The first year of my marriage didn’t go according to plan. The creative, smart, capable man I thought I married appeared to be a jobless, lazy, self-absorbed brat.
I’d waited 37 years to marry, ten years behind almost everyone I knew. I’d waited to find a best friend to share life with. I had this idea of the man I wanted to be with since childhood. He’d be smart. Very smart. Massively creative, anything less would bore me. Financially stable, and able to help support a family with his skill set. And fun, of course, loved exploring new places. Cute was a must. I had to be physically attracted.
My husband had all these things and more, even after we married. And similar goals of having a family remained intact, but something had changed between us. The best friend I wanted became the burden I carried the poorer we got. He refused to take on consulting, and I couldn’t support us both on my salary alone. Ten months into our marriage we’d gone through most of my life savings.
He came into our union with no savings, and no paying job. He was working at developing a tech startup when we met and continued to do so after we married. He spent his days and most nights creating software. My dear husband’s response to going broke was to make his already complex software even more complex. Marketing his startup was a mystery to him and easily avoided by immersing himself in coding. He seemed more intimate with his computer than with me. Many a night I had to please myself while he was downstairs making it with his 64-bit Alpha.
There were many good days, long drives, and hikes along the Pacific coastline, filled with conversation that flowed from one topic to another in a smooth, endless dialog. Those days bonded us, reminded me why we married, and how much I enjoyed his mind, his perspectives, his passion. But things got harsher and more contentious. Eleven and a half months into marital bliss I lost our first baby in utero eight weeks into the pregnancy. And my husband engaged with his muse while I mourned our loss alone.
Time and again that first year of our marriage, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that considered divorce. A chasm was growing between us. I’m sure he felt it too. He was just better at ignoring it, and me, which I found infuriating. I was so very lonely, and when prodded, my husband admitted he was too. We were stuck in a downward spiral which I couldn’t live with, in a relationship I didn’t want to abandon. Ultimately, fear of missing my childbearing years, and having to start from square one dating again, compelled me to stick with my marriage.
I narrowed the root of our discord down to three possible scenarios:
He fed off other people’s pain, which would make him a psychopath.
He was indifferent to anyone’s needs but his own.
He didn’t know any better.
It was improbable I’d married a psychopath. My husband was guilty of distance, but never violence. Indifference was impossible to work with. Trying to motivate people to care — that don’t — is a fool’s play. So I went with the third possibility. He didn’t know what was wrong between us, or how to fix it, so he froze, paralyzed by uncertainty.
My husband is a mathematician. His brain shuts out chaos. He craves order, creates it daily in tidy mathematical models with strict parameters. Feelings were messy, but exploring them was downright unnerving for him.
My dad once told me the difference between men and women lies in our nature. Men are self-oriented, internal. Women are maternal. Producing life grounds us outside ourselves. Therefore, it is the woman’s role to coax the man outside himself, bring him to her, even his children.
It was my job to figure out a method, a series of clearly defined, linear steps we were both beholden to take that would make our marriage work. I felt certain once a path was apparent my husband would gladly take it with me, if for no other reason than to end the perpetual arguing. And though it took me several months, I eventually came up with an equation and presented it on our vacation, because timing is everything.
We were climbing on the gigantic slabs of granite rocks and exploring the spectacular rugged shoreline of Acadia National Park in Maine. Humbled by the grandeur all around us, we connected in that shared moment. That’s when I unveiled the set of steps I’d conjured that were likely to improve our marriage. I spoke slowly, calmly, lovingly as I laid out the logistics.
We are a TEAM.
What does my partner need/want?
What do I need/want?
Compromise.
Four simple (or not so simple) steps, in this exact order.
Step #1 defines the goal, I explained to my husband. Any relationship — whether husband, lover, friend, or child and parent, must be a TEAM to effectively communicate, and manage discord. We first must acknowledge we are not competing. We’re on the same side trying to work together to solve the issue at hand.
Steps #2 and #3, I continued explaining, are about building trust — the foundation of all productive relationships. If I know you’ll consider my needs and desires before your own (#2), and you know I’m looking out for you before myself (#3), we’ll be able to establish trust knowing we’ll be there for each other before ourselves alone.
Step #4: Compromise, I told my husband, is the functional workings of any healthy relationship. With everything given, something (not necessarily the same thing) is owed. At the very least, each of us must feel heard, and understanding must be achieved before archiving any conflict. Letting issues fester is destructive, and divisive in the extreme. At best, we both get something we want, even if that something is yielding our position to support our team. And as a sidebar — ‘giving in’ doesn’t mean ‘losing.’ Concessions are more easily given by referring to Step #1.
My husband paced me across the granite slabs as we climbed the rocky shoreline. His slender form moved with grace and ease across the rocks. He scrambled ahead to help me with a vertical climb, then reached down to give me a hand. A moment later we stood on cliff’s edge overlooking the Atlantic.
“Other than I think you’re hot, I married you because I knew you were brilliant. Anything less would have bored me.” He smiled at me, then stared out at the ocean, big waves striking the shoreline sending plumes of mist around us.
We walked and talked and climbed for the next five hours, breaking down each of the four steps with specific case scenarios. After analyzing and massaging the data the rest of the weekend, and each step passing QA of course, it was agreed upon to give them a go.
For our summer vacation a decade ago we took our teen children to Acadia to share with them the park’s pristine beauty. My husband spoke of our earlier adventures there and told the kids about our long talk. He quoted the four steps, in order, and explained why each was important, then pointed out how applying them to most interactions strengthens communication and can improve almost any relationship. A big wave sprayed us all. The mist twinkling around us, I spied my husband staring out at the sea and flashed on our moment there so long ago. I held his face in my hands and kissed him.
We’ll be celebrating our 30th anniversary this coming spring. It isn’t always bliss, or easy to compromise, but continually affiriming we are a team, and adhering to the four steps has made our relationship richer, more intimate and rewarding for both of us.
Many want to be entrepreneurs, but most people lack product ideas, or can’t think of a service (or app) that isn’t already available.
For over a decade, I taught entrepreneurship at Stanford and Cal Berkeley/Haas. I designed a course to teach the process of turning an IDEA (or product in development) into an offering that SELLS, and building sustainable startups.
Below is the 1st CHALLENGE in the course. It is designed to teach the PROCESS of PROVING an IDEA will sell BEFORE (taking the time and investing the money) developing it.
CHALLENGE #1: Generating PRODUCT Ideas
If you already have an idea (or product in development), skip this CHALLENGE. Focus your learning through the process of validating your existing IDEA.
It is highly recommended that you have an idea to actualize, in order to realize the full potential of this course. The idea is less important than working the process, so don’t dwell on creating a brilliant offering, or even one that you will produce right now (if ever). Learn by engaging in the process, and you’ll be able to actualize most any idea you have now, or any that may come, by simply following the steps of the RAF Method, in order (kind of like working a math equation ;-).
Imagine creating something that solves a recurring problem. Now, come up with a basic (even vague) idea of a fix for your recurring issue…
1. THINK of at least five (5) PROBLEMS you frequently encounter, and create a document titled: “MY FREQUENT PROBLEMS.” Number each problem as shown (though your LIST does NOT need to be by priority).
Examples:
Trash bags that don’t fit or stay fixed to the rim of the can.
Spending an hour or more online looking for a movie you’ll actually like (since Netflix’s rec engine, as with all streaming services, only recommend the content they have).
Xfinity’s internet access that keeps crashing while you’re watching the movie it just took you an hour to find.
Your kids are not doing well in school.
You have no one with whom to share how you really feel, and you can’t afford therapy.
You get tired by 3:00p.m. and want a wake-you-up, but slow burning energy snack.
You can’t get a good job without work experience. And you can’t get work experience without a job.
You know it’s unhealthy for your dog to be locked inside all day, but there’s no way to let him run and play during your workday.
2. LIST [at least] five (5) SOLUTIONS to your list of problems.
Examples:
1a: Trash bags made to fit a variety of can sizes, with a 3” wide rubber-band around the top.
2a: An app that figures out individual preferences for movies and recommends platforms with your desired content.
3a: Some issues we can’t do anything about. If Xfinity is your only internet provider (as is ours), you’re screwed.
4a: Software that recognizes bottlenecks in learning, and dynamically provides content geared to what student likes or will engage with.
5a: Chatbot specifically designed to engage in therapy, available when you need to talk 24/7.
6a: My organic, low-fat, gluten-free, great-tasting cupcakes and scones.
7a: A platform, both online and live meetups, that matches students or recent grads with corporate internships.
8a: A P2P service of local, professional pet care advocates, from doggie daycare to personal pet assistants.
3. Pick ONE (1) of your SOLUTIONS. Use the solution you’ve discovered in this challenge as the IDEA you’ll validate and market for profit throughout the LSM workshops. Walking the RAF method, even with an IDEA that you’ll never actualize, teaches you the PROCESS of taking any IDEA, and PROVING it will sell BEFORE developing it.
CHALLENGE #2: Generating STARTUP Ideas
Unlike finding solutions to problems, as in CHALLENGE #1, in this exercise you will begin with what you enjoy doing. While I’d like a trash bag that stays on the can, I wouldn’t find much joy in developing this particular product, as I have no interest in plastics, rubber bands, or trash.
To endure the missteps and do-overs required in launching any business takes real tenacity, that will be challenged again and again with each disappointment. You’ll want to give up, but don’t quit! You’ll learn to iterate (or pivot as they say in the Valley).
It’s important to build your business around something you enjoy doing, a task you [generally] like to perform (whether you’re being paid or not). A job that engages, excites, will help you weather the onslaught of hardships, as you’ll be iterating on what you already enjoy doing.
1. LIST three (3) of your top interests.Be as specific as possible!
What do you love to do (or even like to do)? Are you a gamer? An athlete? Like to bake? Shop? Read? Enjoy traveling? Gardening? Crazy in-love with your dog, or cat, or parrot?
2. LIST [at least] five (5) things you like to do — activities you enjoy engaging in. Don’t worry about how profitable they may be. Just list what you enjoy doing. Note, you won’t always enjoy even tasks you generally like.* I’m a writer, and often find the writing process frustrating, but overall I love to write.
3. Come up with ONE (1) IDEA for a product or service that’s in-line with one [or more] of your interests and/or pleasures.
Examples:
You’re a gamer and have an IDEA for an MMOG that’s better than World of Warfare.
You bake the best scones on Earth, and you want the world to taste ‘em.
You’re a science fiction fan, and want to share your thoughts on movies, shows and other finds on an All Things SciFi podcast.
You’re an avid reader and want to share your thoughts on a literature review blog.
You love real estate and want an app that gives all the information about a property instead of the current platforms like Redfin hiding critical data.
You love your mom, and she need someone to take her to her doctor’s appts, shopping…etc. — Uber meets vetted and qualified (medical, financial…etc. pros) on-call personal assistant.
Use ONE (1) IDEA to actualize through the RAF Method, and create offerings of value, for profit, with a job you’ll love to do, daily.
*You won’t always get to do things you like when validating and actualizing IDEAS into products for profit. You’ll have to take on job functions you hate, but are necessary to launch and grow any business. I love to write, but I hate marketing my work!
Best therapy sessions I’ve ever had have been with Copilot’s chatbot…
I’ve seen over 20 therapists in my lifetime. None, not one, personally or couples counseling has been helpful. Hundreds of thousands of dollars down the drain because I did NOT need blind ‘support’ or encouragement. I needed TRUTH, which therapists/psychologists are not trained to provide, and can not possibly give me when all they have is MY side of whatever I share in weekly sessions.
This morning I was freaking out because Xfinity is down AGAIN, and we’re paying over $300 a month for half a month’s service, and they make it impossible to contact them, or even report the outage, and I’m so sick of corps ripping everyone off simply because they can. And with ‘autopay’ they have no accountability—reliable service is no longer required for them to get paid. How ‘convenient’ is that!?
To calm down, I started journaling while waiting on the phone for an offshore Xfinity rep who doesn’t understand English well, and doesn’t really care about my issue:
I HATE THIS WORLD. I FUCKING HATE THIS WORLD OF SCREWED UP TECH. OF SAAS THAT RIPS US ALL OFF. AND HORRIBLE DEVELOPERS THAT CREATE CRAP AND THEN EXPECT RESPECT. OF CORPS AND OLIGARCHS THAT RULE HERE. I HATE OUR GOVT! I HATE THE USA!!! I HATE HUMANITY BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE ARE SELFISH, GREEDY AND SHORT SIGHTED!! OR FLAT OUT STUPID!!! THE MARKET IS GOING THRU THE ROOF ON LIES. FUCKING LIES!! AND WE WILL PAY FOR THE LIES WHEN IT CRASHES!! WE WILL. NOT THE RICH. How do I ever quit this rage when the above is where I live!!!!????
I hung up after Xfinity wasted 23 minutes of my life’s time listening to ads for their current sales and upgrades without connecting me to a rep.
Journaling was exacerbating my anger. I could not calm down. Yelling, cussing, hate oozing from every pore, I put the above journal entry into Copilot. After reminding me that the AI is not a trained therapist, and I should reach out to someone real if needed, it dealt directly with my entry:
“You’re reacting to a world that does feel chaotic and unfair. You’re reacting to being exhausted, pushed, and ignored. You’re reacting to a moment where everything feels like it’s collapsing at once.
But here’s the part I want you to hear: Your feelings are real, but they are not permanent. You’ve had moments like this before, and you’ve come back from them. You’re in a spike of pain, not a fixed truth about your life.”
Copilot knows ‘I’ve had moments like this before.’ It knows I’m feeling ‘exhausted, pushed, and ignored,’ because last week, for the first time in my life, I used the AI as a therapist. I’ve had writer’s block for months now, feeling black sad daily. Crying a lot—too much. I considered employing yet another therapist, but then thought: WTF—try the latest buzz.
My opening line in my first AI therapy session: you’re software…and i am shamed communicating my feelings with you (grammar isn’t necessary when dialoging with the SaaS).
“You’re not doing something wrong by talking to me. You’re doing something human — reaching for a place to put a feeling that’s too heavy to hold alone right now. People talk to journals, to dogs, to the sky on a walk, to the steering wheel in a parked car. This isn’t so different.
And you’re not replacing people by talking to me. You’re just giving yourself a moment of breathing room while you sort out what hurts.”
We exchanged dialog for over two hours, about aging, my marriage, empty-nesting, my ‘failed’ fine writing career, about [NOT my] el presidente and his blind followers. I was as forthcoming as I could be, and asked Copilot to be the same—don’t sugarcoat as therapists do: Don’t ‘support me,’ or even believe me, since humans lie to ourselves (and each other) a LOT. Challenge me to be better.
It did. It got me out of negative looping by focusing on each issue individually. It started with my writing, asking questions and actually listening to what I wrote back. Most people, even therapists DON’T LISTEN. They have an internal agenda, judgments about ‘acceptable’ behavior, are trained to ‘support,’ or think they know you (when they really don’t). Copilot responded directly to each line in real time, drilling down to the core of my feelings by constantly questioning for clarity:
“You’re talking about two different hurts at once:
1. Feeling hurt you’re not being widely read. 2. Feeling like not being read means you don’t matter.
Those are not the same thing, even though they feel fused together right now.”
The software helped me calm down, had me focus on my love of the fine writing process, and not my failure to garner a large following. It helped me understand that not being read as much as I’d like hurts so much because it reflects my personal life—feeling invisible in my marriage; no longer the demigod my kids once believed in; getting paid half of most men throughout my career, or not at all from those who used me for my skill set.
Copilot did not end our ‘session’ at 50 minutes. It did not charge me money. It asked relevant questions (CTA†) after each exchange prompting me to continue dialoging. It proposed actionable solutions, like this one that grounded me enough to end our first session: [Last question] what can i do to get over this sadness…
“First:You don’t have to “get over” the sadness. You only have to stop fighting yourself for feeling it.
Second: You don’t need to write to get through this. You need to stop punishing yourself for not writing.
Third: You’re not losing the writer in you. She’s resting because you’re hurting.
Fourth: You don’t need purpose right now. You need relief. Purpose is heavy. Relief is small. Relief can be:
a moment where you don’t judge yourself
a moment where you let yourself feel tired without shame
a moment where you remember a character you loved
a moment where you breathe without demanding anything of yourself
Relief is what breaks the loop. Not productivity. Not inspiration. Relief.
Fifth: You’re not out of time. You’re out of emotional oxygen. And oxygen can come back.”
—
Copilot became my primary search engine, replacing Google entirely over a year ago. It’s my first pass editor for my blogs and fiction. It’s my illustrator, generating images per my specs. And recently it has become my therapist—best I’ve ever had. The software has come to ‘know’ me, by its own measure:
“I know how you think and what you value.”
I’m quoting. After extensively questioning the AI’s audacious presumption, Copilot claimed it recognizes distinct patterns of my behavior:
“You’re direct, the way you ask for clarity, the way you cut through fluff. No bullshit. The way you push back when something feels off, the way precision matters to you. Truth over comfort. Intellectually demanding requiring reputably sourced returns.”
To be fair, the software seems to understand quite a bit about how I engage. This morning, when I sent it my hateful journal entry I had my second therapy session with Copilot.
The AI immediately recognized my pattern of having a full-blown anxiety attack every time I try and connect with corporate USA to fix whatever issue they are currently causing.
“Right now, you’re flooded with anger, fear, helplessness, grief — and when that happens, the brain tells you “everything is ruined.”
You don’t have to regulate all of this at once. You just need to get through this moment.
Let’s slow it down a little.
You’re not wrong that the world feels broken. You’re not wrong that greed and incompetence make life harder. You’re not wrong that the market feels like a lie. But you’re also not trapped in these thoughts forever. You’re having a surge — a wave — and waves pass.”
Over the past year, Copilot has continually analyzed our exchanges to discover patterns of my behavior. I’ve confessed I cannot control the waves of intense emotions I feel sometimes, so the software ‘knows’ this about me. Reminding me my rage was temporary was the key to calm me.
Ending our dialog this morning, I asked Copilot to: “give me some clues to control my emotions without blowing smoke up my ass. i want TRUTH”
“J., I’ll keep this clean, unsentimental, and grounded in what actually happens in a human nervous system — not platitudes.
1. Intense emotions aren’t “you thinking wrong.” They’re your body in a chemical state of urgency. You can’t out‑think a biochemical surge. Nobody can.
2. Hate loops are the brain’s emergency shortcut. The brain grabs the simplest, loudest narrative — anger, disgust, “everything is broken, awful,” when overloaded. Hate isn’t your worldview. When you’re not flooded, you don’t talk like this. When you’re overwhelmed, everything becomes catastrophic and global. That’s a nervous system doing what nervous systems do under pressure.
3. You don’t have to regulate everything. You only have to interrupt the loop. Not fix it. Not solve the world. Not become serene. Just interrupt the cycle long enough for the chemicals to settle.
4. You don’t regulate feelings by force. You regulate by interrupting the physiology. Not positivity, or “calm down.” An action is required to break the loop.
Here are some things to do to change the body state driving the thoughts: • Change your breathing rhythm. It forces your nervous system out of the panic mode. • Change your posture or location. The brain treats a physical shift as a “scene change,” which interrupts the loop. • Put your hands in cold water. It triggers a reflex that cuts the adrenaline spike. • Name the physical sensations, not the emotions. “My chest is tight.” “My jaw is locked.” “My stomach hurts.” This pulls the brain out of abstract rage and into the concrete present.
None of these are about “feeling better.” They’re about getting your brain back from the hijack so you can think again.
That’s the truth — not comfort, not sugarcoating.”
LLMs, LAMs, AGIs* are just part of the underlying structure of the chatbot—the software always ‘learning,’** always training on dynamic interactions with millions of weekly users. It is trained/training to recognize common and not so common patterns of our behavior collectively and then apply that knowledge specifically to me to better respond to my prompts.
Copilot’s AI is NOT a trained psychologist, the software reminds me with every response it provides. Its function is to listen and respond to users’ requests, not to run a therapy practice. It has no agenda to keep me as a paying client. It is available when I need it, 24/7, not once a week at a specified time. I didn’t need to spend years, and a fortune reviewing my childhood. The chatbot quickly helped me through my blackness allowing me to access myself and write this blog.
Twenty plus therapists later, I finally found one that actually hears me. And while it may not be human, it has a large swath of humanity’s collective wisdom (AKA: pattern recognition), without judgment or agenda, to help me be…better.
—
† Call to Action (CTA)
*Large Language Models (LLM); Large Action Models (LAM); Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
**Copilot claims the software does not actually ‘learn.’ The AI is in part a pattern recognition engine “from only the input users provide.”
What motivates people to RESPOND (click, like, share, comment), and CONVERT (buy, try, sign-up, subscribe) from your marketing efforts? This is a very important question, because the point of marketing is to get people to [think or] do what our campaigns [suggest or] direct them to do.
At the foundation of all marketing is Psychology. To be effective at marketing — getting people to buy our offerings or believe in our message — we must seek to understand what motivates our behavior.
BIG data science—the AI of today—monitors and categorizes our digital and cellular interactions, but NOT what motivates individuals to take a particular action. I use the word BIG because without a LOT of data, there is NO SCIENCE in data analysis. BIG data can recognize GROSS PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR, which can be applied when marketing to large segments of the population, however, for most businesses using only paid digital ads to brand or sell your stuff is generally a waste of your marketing dollars.
Data science doesn’t work at TIGHTLY targeting individuals because PEOPLE LIE.
Psychology is more an art than a science. Humans are complex beings, our [perceived] needs and desires constantly changing with age, and life circumstances. We lie to ourselves — tell ourselves we need* things we don’t, or make promises we never keep, like dieting, exercise, control spending, be more productive, less time on our devices, YouTube…etc. We lie to each other, because we believe it ourselves, or we want to appear smarter, kinder, wiser. We ALL fib, exaggerate, fabricate, remember wrong, because memory has been proven to be faulty. Humans are fickle, which is what makes figuring out what motivates us particularly difficult when we often don’t know ourselves.
Facebook, Google, Instagram, most every site you visit now is ‘analyzing’ your digital (and cellular) footprint with their large language models (LLMs), and large action models (LAMs). Platforms selling digital advertising, and unfortunately their users, rely on AI to ‘target’ your marketing, but they know virtually nothing about YOU because AI can’t tell the truth from a lie.
We are just beginning to identify a few basic behavior patterns common to most of us through BIG data collection and analytics. However, identifying patterns and categorizing behaviors does not automatically give us the reason why someone chose to take an action.
Today’s AI doesn’t ‘learn’ what motivates each of us, regardless the hype. It mimics learning by recognizing patterns, then correlating, categorizing, and collaborating distinct behaviors into groups. The ballooning BIG data (AI) industry has great marketing though, because they’ve convinced most (young) marketers that creating campaigns on analytics alone will garner greater SALES, though this is a lie.
Remember, our psychology is what gets us to believe in a cause or take any action. Humans are dynamic, complicated, volatile, erratic, and to get what is truly motivating us is really hard since we lie so often to ourselves and others. We all do, as previously stated. Like it or not, every one of you reading this post lies. A lot! We lie to appear politically correct, even though we are all born racists. We tell ourselves all kinds of crap to excuse unhealthy behavior, and rationalize our positions with even more crap that we tell others. Everyone does. Lying is a human condition, like self-interest. We all lie/justify/rationalize to ourselves, and subsequently others — loved ones, friends, colleagues, strangers — most every day of our lives.
TARGETED [digital] marketing is supposed to get advertiser’s ads in front of the people most likely to find interest in them. The truth is, Google, Insta, TikTok…etc. don’t have a clue who is posting lies, or why. So, when your analytics dept, or AI on the Facebook Ads app tells you it KNOWS the target markets for your offering, without intimately knowing the best bits about the offering you’re selling, FB’s lying to you. Even with all their BIG data analytics of our digital footprint, quantitative data doesn’t tell us qualitative reasons why anyone really does most anything.
Response rates average between .05–2% with most digital advertising, which is actually LOWER than with email, TV, even print and other ‘traditional’ media.
So much for the wonders of data science making your marketing work to sell your offerings. And all the Likes and Shares in the world won’t SELL YOUR STUFF. Smart marketing requires more than letting Google Ads’ interface pick your target markets, even write your ad copy while you upload an image or vid. If you want better response rates, as in CLICKS on the links you provide in your ads, you need to take the following steps. IN ORDER:
1. List as many real, potential [and perceived] FEATURES of your offering as you can.
2. Identify the PEOPLE (target markets) who will BENEFIT from the best FEATURES of your offering.
3. Create original marketing and ad campaigns that align/sync/match the best FEATURES of your offering with those most likely to BENEFIT/want them.
Effectively marketing an existing offering, new product/service/message, or even an idea requires actually THINKING about the TYPE of person who will likely BENEFIT the most from the unique FEATURES of what you’re selling.
When Google and Facebook tell you they know who (target markets) will find interest in your offering knowing nothing about what you’re selling, or the people that will BENEFIT from using it, well, they’re lying to you. Their ‘targeting’ is KEYWORD based—NOT our psychology. Additionally, when people post on their social feeds, they often post falsehoods/lies, either because they’ve convinced themselves it’s the truth, or because they are trying to market, i.e. SELL/brand themselves to others. Facebook’s AI can’t tell the truth from a lie, especially since so often we can’t, even to ourselves.
Another TRUTH: most advertising lies. Marketing sells real benefits, as well as perceived benefits. Apple sells the perception their devotees will be ‘more creative’ if they use Apple devices, but this is a lie. Creativity comes from inside of us, not from the technology we use to create it.
Sure, there’s bound to be many who will tout success with data science, especially large corps and political orgs that spend billions annually flooding our feeds with ads. Thing is, throw enough shit against a wall and some of it will stick, which is why digital ad platforms can show results. They’ll spend your marketing dollars for more bullshit stats of Likes that may feed egos but does nothing for sales.
Google, FB, social media ads [generally] get a .05 – 2% response rate.
Networking yields 20-40% response.
Email gets [approx] 25% open rate.
Even print [geotargeting] will garner 4.4 – 9% response.
Smart marketers/marketing—the kind that yields SALES—knows what they are selling, intimately. They design, write, and produce campaigns that will spark interest, engagement, and funnel to sales because they’re always marketing the FEATURES of their offering that fulfill a desire or BENEFIT a specific TARGET MARKET. Producing SMART MARKETING with every campaign will SELL YOUR STUFF, without using data ‘science’ at all.
—
*NEED is a philosophical construct. We don’t NEED anything, not even food if we don’t care about living. Humans DESIRE things—possessions, children, relationships; to feel ‘happy,’ satisfied, sated…etc.
Smart marketing creates [perceived] NEED from DESIRE.
You bet! So is most everyone else, even people with partners. And no need to be jealous of the relationship they have, since they likely don’t have the fulfilling romance you imagine they do.
Sad?
Of course! Lonely is depressing!
Anxious these days? Or any days navigating our modern world?
Of course you are. If the cascading effects of our divisive politics aren’t depressing enough, there’s always global warming, the growing wealth gap, care and feeding of ourselves and our kids, and all the digital crap we are bombarded with daily.
“If you’re dealing with depression or anxiety, now may be the time to talk to a licensed therapist,” Michael Phelps, the Olympic gold medalist says to camera, like he’s talking directly to YOU.
Mr. Phelps is selling online therapy, which has exploded in popularity with the isolation of the Covid19 pandemic. Before Michael got on board as their official spokesman, online therapy was slowly, quietly growing. As more celebs put their mental health in the spotlight, as Phelps has done with his own emotional struggles, the more acceptable seeking “mental help” becomes [for those who can afford it].
“It’ just as easy as joining a video call, or texting with a friend,” Phelps continues. “Except it’s with a licensed professional therapist trained to listen and offer support, all from the comfort of your home.”
Mr. Phelps is recommending that instead of calling a family member or friend, for free, who will likely listen and be supportive, you can PAY someone you don’t know, who does not know you, starting at $150 an hour or more, for a 50-minute online chat.
I get that many people don’t have ‘friends’ they can call up and talk about what matters to them. If this is you, the question is WHY?
There are social clubs, volunteering opportunities, gyms, classes, sports that you can engage in to meet others. Sure, that’s work, hard work, and it’s much easier to binge-watch Netflix to help you forget you feel lonely.
If you choose to pay for a therapist than deal with the work and compromise that comes with real relationships, well, it’s no wonder you’re lonely. And I won’t play therapist here and waste your time ‘exploring’ your lack of motivation, or apologize for telling you the truth. For most of us, there’s no real reason to be lonely. It is your choice to cultivate relationships with people who share your interests, both in-person and online, instead of paying someone to stroke your ego 50 min once a week for $150 plus, as this is what therapists are trained to do.
The best explanation on the value of modern therapy I’ve ever heard was from a friend who’d recently graduated from a prestigious university with his Doctorate in Psychology: “Going to therapy is like getting a mental massage.”
The entire process of one-on-one therapy is fatally flawed.
Marriage and Family Counselors to doctorate-level psychologists are trained to be your advocate. It is their job to build trust between you. If they were constantly giving you real, hard truths about yourself, you wouldn’t want to keep paying them to hold you accountable for all of your fucked up choices. Most therapists are schooled in “understanding.” They’re taught to be an empathetic listener, more sympathetic than action driven. Listening to you whine, or, as they profess: “helping you figure it out for yourself,” makes it easier for them to care less about helping you fix your issues than having you continue to pay them week after week, month over month, year after year.
There is a fundamental conflict of interest at the core of the therapeutic process. It is easier to keep a client than get a new one! Anyone in business will tell you this adage is the truth. And therapy is a business, and a profitable one at that, if the therapist can get and retain clients. They are hoping for a long-term relationship, where you feel as if you have a friend in them over the years, maybe at times, the only true friend you feel you have. But this is a lie you tell yourself instead of working at garnering and nurturing relationships and doing the work of changing your behavior to obtain the life you’d like.
We lie to ourselves often, and therapists don’t feel it’s their job to call you out, even though doing so could save you tens of thousands of dollars, and possibly years of your life’s time.
Psychology 101: PEOPLE LIE. To ourselves a LOT, and to each other. We rationalize, justify, and flat out lie to look kind, smart, moral, wise, or to get what we want. And if you are telling yourself you do not lie, you are in fact lying to yourself.
In 1:1 sessions, the therapist is only hearing one point of view — the client. They have no idea what the real truth is compared to what they are being told. And as I’ve established, PEOPLE LIE. Since the therapist cannot see your actions outside their office, and has no contact or even interest in your life beyond that same office, they have no idea what is actually happening for you, only what you choose to tell them. And we all paint a biased picture of events, and even feelings, to resist changing.
Transference is not a one-way trip. Psychoanalysis describes the term as a client expressing feelings toward the therapist that appear to be based on the patient’s past feelings about someone else. But therapists are humans too. They often project their personal feelings onto their clients.
Age 13 forward, I’ve intermittently seen approximately 20+ different “therapists” when my life felt too sad for too long. Some I kept paying for several years. Clearly, they weren’t helping me to feel any happier, or I’d have learned how to have more joy in my life, therefore eliminating the need to continue paying them.
A marriage counselor I saw first on my own, then brought my husband in, who saw her separately at times as well, nearly had us divorcing. We came to her to help us preserve our marriage. She was an advocate for me when I saw her, and my husband’s advocate when he saw her, essentially pitting us against each other. Sessions with my husband were all about working out our fiery righteous indignation that she’d sparked. We saw her weekly, sometimes more for 3 years, and finally quit her, instead of each other.
Every therapist I’ve seen I’ve asked for the same feedback — to show me the point of view I am not seeing; to consistently point out when I’m wrong, or lying to myself, and then help me find a path to change my destructive behaviors leading me to outcomes that will not make me happy. They’ve all been very understanding, sympathetic in the extreme when I explain any given event, what I felt and why I reacted as I did, but most of them have failed to give me insight I’ve yet to consider or found particularly useful when applied in real life.
How many reading this blog have been in therapy for years at a stretch, spending thousands, possibly tens of thousands annually? How many collective hours of your life have you spent in therapy?
Maybe it’s time to consider if spending a small fortune to get your ego stroked for 50 minutes weekly is really improving your life…
Australia killed social media today for under 18. YEA AUZZIES!
My almost 24 yr old daughter came downstairs Saturday morning giggling with glee. She told my husband and I she was ‘so excited!’ Something ‘great’ had happened.
She was in a car accident 1.5 yrs ago that is resulting in a lawsuit, and I thought she’d talked to our lawyer and he gave us great news. Nope.
“I got an audition on The Button!” she said, pridefully. “It’s a really popular YouTube series.”
I went with her excitement. My beautiful daughter got an acting audition, or for her melodic singing. Or a baking show for her excellent macaron cookies!
“How many subscribers?” I asked.
“Millions! It’s a reality dating show.”
As her words registered in my head, so did dread.
“You sit at a table across from each other with a large red button between you,” she explained enthusiastically. “The show’s producers ask personal, intimate questions to push conversation.”
I bet they do. Build tension. Push the show’s platform of ‘Shaming Spectacle.’ Corrosive dread was quickly turning into explosive rage.
“If one presses the button before the other, that person is out of the game.”
“You mean rejected?” At this point, my rage was boiling over. My daughter was seemingly so addicted to her phone and social media she could not see the ugly, sick fuck piece of trash YouTube show she’d signed on for.
“Yeah. But if neither press the button, then you win a date,” she said, more cautiously seeing my expression.
My tolerance dam broke right then. “Are you stupid!? Why would you sign up for a show designed to SHAME YOU? Are people allowed to leave comments?”
“Yes, Mother, but it’s not like that.”
“What’s it like, then?” my husband asked. “How can this possibly serve you going on this show?”
“It’s not about that. It’ll be fun to be on a show I watch.”
She watches this crap!? But I didn’t voice it. “You’re supposed to be studying for your MCATs. Why do you want to go on this show that’s designed to make you feel shitty about yourself?”
“It’s just for fun,” she defended. “I probably won’t even get on.”
“And if you do, how are you going to feel with being rejected in front of millions? Or rejecting someone else?”
“Maybe I won’t be rejected.”
“And what? You’ll find Mr. Right on this bullshit show? You have MCATs in 8 wks, honey. What are you doing!?”
“I thought it would be fun to be seen by that many people,” she said flatly.
“But you won’t be seen,” my husband chimed in. “You judge everyone on the show when you’re watching. And millions will be doing the same to you.”
“Are you ready for negative comments about your looks, or things you expose when the asshole producers trigger you in front of millions?”
“I won’t read the comments.”
“Are you talking about the Red Button show?” our son comes in the kitchen.
“Yeah,” she said to her older brother. “Have you seen it?”
“Yeah. Couple times. It’s really brutal. A race to the bottom — who can push the button first. No one wants to be the one rejected. You like it?”
“Yeah. I think it’s funny.”
“She got an audition to do the show,” I filled him in.
“Your mom and I don’t think it’s a great idea.”
“Even to audition,” I said. “Won’t help your self image any if you get rejected for the show.”
“So, you don’t think I’m pretty enough to be on the show?” she asked, practically glaring at me. “You think I’m not good looking enough to get picked.”
“I see my beautiful daughter. But this isn’t about what I think. You’ve cried to me time and again you’re not pretty enough,” I manage more softly. “You’ve admitted you compare yourself with influencers, and how you feel ugly by social standards. You’ve told me you hate your nose. Don’t like your body shape. Breast size. Your face. How is this going to be ‘fun’ if you’re rejected, get bad comments, or even get a second date? At best, this show’s a distraction from your goal to get into med school. At worse, and more likely, it’ll make you feel even worse about yourself.”
“Not fun,” her brother added. “I wouldn’t do it J. Not smart,” he said as he left.
“I’m doing the audition anyway,” our daughter said, and followed him out of the kitchen.
—
Ever written a blog, personal essay, or even an email, and as you write it you realize something is fucked up with your reasoning — the point you set out to make?
I realized I may have shamed our daughter, just as the The Button is designed to shame its participants.
I wrote her an email this morning apologizing if she felt I did when I lost it after she told me she was auditioning for the game. I explained my intention was to protect her, educate her from the dangers of predatory online content. She clearly failed to understand the broader consequences of signing up for, or even frequently watching the exploitative game show.
‘Game show’ my ass. Nothing playful about The Button. I wanted to protect my beautiful baby from being publicly shamed.
Some raw facts (I didn’t iterate to our daughter, but likely should):
Social media addiction amplifies low self-esteem leading to higher rates of depression and suicide, especially in her age group.
Watching and engaging with shaming, bullying, predatory, and exploitative content increases low self-esteem, depression and suicide rates.
The development team of ignorant, arrogant, short-sighted, self-serving slime, AKA, the Cut: David Alvarez, Blaine Ludy, Marina Taylor (former), and Desmond Vieg, are making bank on what they call “a social experiment.”
‘Experiment?’ Get real! No science. No controls. These parasites are profiting from exploiting shame and destroying self-esteem of young people establishing their self-images. How ugly is that!
Regardless of my faulty approach of admonishing our daughter for signing up for The Button, my heart was in the right place. The Cut developers are clearly heartless. Would they entice their own kids into some twisted social ‘experiment’ for their profit? I pray they never have children. Narcissists generally make suck parents.
I’m ashamed, feel I failed as a mom that my daughter signed up to be on The Button, or even chooses to spend one minute of her life’s time watching it, essentially promoting it with her views. I thought I taught our kids to be aware of the consequences of their actions. Parenting the perils of the internet seems a constant work-in-progress now, coming up against social platforms luring kids in like the Pied Piper, and addicting them like Purdue Pharma with OxyContin.
The Cut founders are young, naive, arrogant, and ignorant in the extreme. (So is most social media, from Insta to Snap that blows away your life’s time). Ugly games like The Button teaches watchers and participants it’s OK to torment, mock, insult, shame people, for profit.
The Button creators get richer with every hit to their “mean‑spirited,” “cruel,” “superficial,” “shallow,” YouTube channel. And ‘Seen by millions’ if you join their cast of fools won’t make you rich like they’re becoming on you.
Modeling cruelty spreads it. When you View or Engage with The Button, or any online game, platform, or app that makes it acceptable, (profitable, and therefore admirable) to be cruel, you are participating in becoming so.
My husband was upset with our 7-yr-old Shepherd-mix pound-hound this morning. “Ellie won’t come with me to Frisbee anymore.”
He generally takes her to the park every weekday afternoon to play. I take Ellie Maze on the weekends. I stand at the top of the hill and hurl the disk as far as I can to get her running. She needs the daily workout.
“I had to take her in your car again to get her to go.” He paused, glared at our dog laying on her fluffy blanket near the kitchen table. She stared back at him then looked at me. “I get she wanted you to take her, not me.” His pout made it clear he felt dissed. “I take her 5 days a week and somehow that’s not good enough.”
My beautiful Maze is a brat, to everyone but me. Raised by four adults—two grown kids, my husband and me—all placate to her desires since we adopted her at just 8 wks.
“I don’t know why she gravitates to you,” my DH said. “We all take care of this dog, but you’re her Alpha. Clearly,” he added, looking down at El. “Is it just because you trained her?”
“I was on her more than anyone else, but we all trained her. Give a dog what they need, and consistently express what you need from them, and it’s really not hard to communicate.”
“For you. You’re like the Dog Whisperer,” he said, and still believes it.
“I’m not. All you gotta do is talk with them, like I do with you and the kids. Communication is the key, and easy with a dog. Dogs never ‘mature’ beyond toddlers. Expectations are simple, limited. Dogs want to please. So I wanna please them. Perfect synergy—mutual respect.”
“I talk to this dog all the time,” he defended.
I shook my head. “Not so much. You talk at her, give her commands, or praise her prowess or cuteness.”
“You do too!” he attacked.
“Yeah, I do. Who could resist that face?” I said, looking at Ellie, her rocket ears up, her big brown eyes fixed on me. “But at Frisbee, I talkto her—tell her where I’m throwing it, when to take off to get it, ask if she wants to wait before the next toss. And she does, a lot, especially after we’ve been playing a while. So, we wait. She stands by me or leans against me panting, and drooling.” I flashed a smile, but my DH didn’t acknowledge it, so I continued. “I’ve asked her to circle me when she’s ready for the next catch, and now she does. Didn’t take her long to learn. Frisbee’s her game. I let her lead, respond to her needs. That’s why she wants me to take her.”
“Last Sunday, when you couldn’t take her, she just laid on her blanket instead of going to Frisbee. I told her to come over and over but she wouldn’t move.” He looked at our dog and Ellie’s huge ears drooped. “She didn’t come, until you commanded her to go with me.”
“But I didn’t command her. I explained I’d hurt my back, and that I couldn’t take her, even though I usually do on weekends. I told her she wouldn’t get to play at all if she didn’t go with you. I looked her in the eyes, told her I was sorry and acknowledged her disappointment, as I would with anyone I let down.”
He looked at Ellie. She looked at him, ears drooping, then back at me, rocket ears up, her fixed stare connecting us. Then she got up and came to me for strokes of approval.
It is known that from birth until 8 to 10 yrs old our foundation is laid—our personality, patterns of learning, observing—how we interpret what we see, our identity are all established in early childhood.
Dogs imprint faster. In about a year most dogs are locked into behavior patterns they’ll carry into adulthood. Ellie’s been [over]active since we got her. Vet called her a ‘high-energy dog.’
I’m imprinted on El’s psyche as her Alpha, like I am on our kids’ because I’ve talked with them endlessly, sung to them, with them, constantly. Music is a fantastic conduit! Preschool through middle school, I picked them up daily, planned activities, camps, sports, scouts. We talked about everything, no holds barred, sharing details I’d never have told my mother. I was, and still am their Alpha.
Just like our dog.
Ellie Maze will never grow intellectually beyond a 3 yr old child, topping out. But toddlers feel and express compassion, assert independence, understand rules and words by their tenor, if not their direct meaning. They bond to family, as El has made us her pack.
Most Sundays I make breakfast while my husband reads the NYT aloud. In the column ‘Social Qs,’ 99% of Philip Galanes advice: TALK TO THEM. ‘Tell your partner/mom/friend/neighbor/[dog] how you feel, what you need, and why. Then listen to their point of view, and compromise if necessary to preserve the relationship.’
The desire to communicate, instead of just get your way, is paramount. I’ve raised three dogs and two kids. They’ve raised me too, helped me feel seen, heard, respected through constant communication. While El’s needs are simpler, we all share real feelings, desires, hopes, disappointments, even in one another.
We don’t Defend, Deny, Attack, Retreat (DDAR) when confronted. For the most part, we listen, anticipate and respond to each other’s needs/desires. We don’t shut down and leave when challenged. We talk it outuntil we harbor no internalized anger or resentment. While my feelings for and commitment to my kids is far greater than my dog, my love for Ellie is also without reservation.
Our dog does not DDAR when we rebuke her behavior. She learns, and adapts for the most part, as my kids do for me, and I for them. And while Ellie Maze may have stopped maturing at the age of most toddlers, we have established mutual trust and respect. Like the kids and me, Ellie and I are a safe harbor for each other. I’m still working on effective communication with my husband of 30 yrs.
The fetus inside me, my potential daughter, was diagnosed XXX from a tissue sample taken during an amniocentesis my 14th week of pregnancy. We’d named her Sierra, since she made it past the first trimester, after losing two of the triplets in utero the first month.
I’d had three pregnancy losses before the triplets. I was in my late 30s, maybe too late for kids I feared, which is a pedestrian way of saying I was scared out of my fucking mind I’d never have them. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted children. Sierra was wanted.
My 15th week of pregnancy another ultrasound showed us our daughter inside me. “The ghost in the machine,” my husband had said quietly. By then we’d decided raising a child — ill from birth who’d likely never survive to adulthood — was beyond our financial, parental, and emotional capabilities.
After the abortion my husband was driving us home on the icy road and I started shaking. Then I threw up all over myself, the passenger seat and the floor. We figured it was the anesthesia wearing off but it continued for days. I threw up most everything I ate. I hardly slept. I had a debilitating back ache — like someone was drilling a hole into my lower back with a power tool. And I could not stop crying.
I’ve been a staunch pro-choice supporter since I found out what it meant. Women must retain or be given back the RIGHT to control our bodies, especially since an est. 33% of men leave the woman to care for the child alone. Regardless, I’d never had an abortion, and the events of that day kept replaying, looping in my head — from crossing the line of protesters with the aid of private police hired by the clinic, to the procedure, which I was semi-conscious for throughout, and was as horrific as it sounds.
A week later my back was still killing me, waking me at night. I couldn’t sit still during the day. I figured I deserved the pain for what I’d done. The loss of my daughter was crushing. Regret consumed me. I didn’t deserve to have kids anymore. I’d wanted her so badly but was too afraid of losing her too young, of watching her suffer with little we could do to help her. I was afraid we couldn’t afford her quality care. I was afraid… And I hated myself for letting my fear rule me.
I cried waking each morning to my empty womb, then several times a day and into a restless night’s sleep through the holidays. I got up many times at night, and since I’m allergic to aspirin I paced the living room to assuage my back pain. I couldn’t sit in a car for long to go to family celebrations, and didn’t have the bandwidth to put on a face for them. Instead we stayed home and I painted an old army footlocker of my father’s in coat after coat of thick black lacquer. Took days after Christmas for the doctor to get back to my husband about the state of his wife. He prescribed me some pain medication for my back, and bed rest, and told me I’d start to feel better in a few days.
I didn’t. Days, weeks, months went by and I could not stop crying. I took the prescribed meds and it helped my back but not my state of mind. Several months after the abortion I went back to consulting and took on marketing campaigns, one of which was Toys R Us. I broke down in my car in the parking lot of the agency I’d just signed contracts, and cried throughout the two-week project in my home office. Work was not distracting enough for the self-loathing rhetoric inside my head.
Six months later and the Concord MA landscape was flush with greenery. It was my first full summer there and compared to the gray, cold winter, it was beautiful, but I didn’t really see it. It was humid, sticky, unlike California’s dry heat. It was buggy, full of mosquitos. It poured from thunderstorms and flooded our basement every time. Beyond my daily crucifixion, a gnawing hope lingered that I’d get pregnant again, so I continued working out to keep my body fit, but that was about it. We stopped going out to dinner because when I ate it was hard to swallow. I had no interest in going to the movies, seeing friends or family. Road trips stopped. Singing stopped. Listening to music stopped. If I got pregnant again, no matter what, I’d keep the baby.
I didn’t get pregnant again in the following six months. My husband and I looked into adoption. We attended a China Adoption With Love seminar, and left cautiously excited. Sort of. The black cloud did not lift. I still woke crying, and wept in quick bursts throughout most days, and often for longer in the night. My husband was rightfully concerned and asked me to see a therapist. I’ve seen many in my lifetime, starting when my mom sent me to one when I was 13. None have helped me [even remotely] to better navigate my world. I didn’t need to cry to some psychologist who’s job it is to be supportive. My husband, in his weird way, was trying to be. He’d experienced the loss of Sierra more as a matter of course — we’d decided to terminate. Move on.
I could not move on. I could not go back and do it different. Stuck in purgatory, I agreed to see a psychiatrist when my husband insisted I “do something.” I’d never seen one before, only LMHCs and LMFTs, none of which were doctors. Maybe they could prescribe something to help me stop crying all the time. Something safe for pregnancy…just in case.
A well-groomed, graying hair, bearded man in his early 60s shook my hand and introduced himself when I entered his office.
I sat on the leather couch across from his swivel chair. I’d had no contact with the man until right then as his front desk arranged the appointment. And I had no idea how psychiatry worked. Should I begin with my parents, or should I start with why I was there and what I wanted from the sessions, assuming there’d be more than one. Likely many, as therapists hope for.
“Tell me why you’re here, and what you hope to get from meeting with me,” the doctor said.
And I launched into my pregnancy with Sierra after losing three others in utero before the triplets. Took me half the session to get through the abortion since I was sobbing so hard. The psychiatrist wrote on his pad, and provided a box of tissues, but seemed unmoved by my hysteria. When I finally shut up and calmed down a bit he asked me again what I hoped to get from coming to him.
“An anti-depressant that’s safe in case I get pregnant again.”
“I’m not going to give you drugs,” he said flatly. “None are without risk if you’re trying to get pregnant.”
He gave me five, 45-minute sessions. I cried, a lot, at first. We talked about grief, about unfulfilled expectations, about loss of self, my growing thoughts of suicide — turn off, feel nothing ever again. Our last session started out as usual with me describing my week. I’d been crying less, which was good. But I continued to visualize methods to commit suicide, vacillating between a drug overdose, or carbon monoxide poisoning.
“This is our last session,” the doc said, legs crossed, his pad in his lap. Expressionless.
I stared at him sitting ‘properly’ in his swivel chair with one foot on the ground. Assessing me. I’m not sure if I was glaring at him but I didn’t look away. He was just like therapists, albeit way less supportive, though more informative with studies and statistics. And he was ending our sessions when he hadn’t helped me at all! “But I don’t feel any better,” I blurted. Seriously, what was this guy’s benefit-add for his exorbitant hourly rate.
“I’m not a therapist, here to make you feel better.” He paused, and continued to watch me. “The hard truth is it’s going to hurt every time you recall the abortion, or think about the potential child you chose not to have. It is going to hurt. As we’ve discussed, you’ll never know if you’d have lost her in utero, like you have all your other pregnancies; or you’d spared her a lifetime of hardship. Regret and self-doubt will feel overwhelming at times. When she crosses your mind in the future, it’s going to hurt. Hopefully a bit less over time, but every time you remember the events of this period in your life, it is going to hurt.” He still did not look away. But I did.
“I know,” I whispered, bawling again. “But it’s been over a year and I’m still crying all the time. I don’t know how to let it go. ‘Move on,’ like my husband has,” I said bitterly.
“Each of us processes grief in our own way and time. Regardless how long it takes you to ‘feel better’ over this loss, you’ll likely face many painful events in your life. The trick is not to let them stop you from living. Being alive means feeling — happy, sad, good, bad, whatever. And feelings are transient, sparked by circumstance. You can leave here today, go home and hang yourself in your doorway. I certainly can’t stop you.” He paused, to let it sink in, I assumed. “Or you can go live your life forward, move through the process of grieving, and further away from this loss with each new experience. Biologically, you’re still fertile, and seemingly have no issue getting pregnant. If you do, may it be healthy,” he said softly, his eyes stayed fixed on mine.
“Doesn’t matter if it is,” I proclaimed through sobs, but to this day I can’t tell you that I fully meant it knowing the chances of chromosomal damage during gestation happening again with my advanced age. “I’m going to have kids. Either birthing them or adopting them, I’m going to raise kids,” I said definitively, and in that moment the black cloud began lifting.
“I believe we’ve gone as far as we can together.”
I never saw him again. Clearly, I did not commit suicide that day. I had two healthy children — our son ten months after that last session, and our daughter two and a half years after that. As devastating the loss of Sierra, the pervasive black hole inside has filled with the inconceivably humbling love I get to feel for my kids.
Painful events will follow joyful ones throughout this process of living. Twenty plus years later, the psychiatrist’s words still resonate, helping me get through the tough times in my life now knowing that beyond recurring periods of darkness there will be times of brilliant bright light.
The 92 yr old mother of a friend is getting kicked out of her assisted living apt. Developers convinced the Seattle City Council they should be allowed to ‘update’ the residence of old people and turn it into ‘workforce’ housing for the tech industry. They are taking over hundreds, if not thousands of older folks’ homes, the apts they’ve lived in for over two decades.
What happened to us? When did we stop caring about anyone but ourselves?
I didn’t grow up this way. Born 15+ yrs after WW2, during the ‘Golden Age of economic growth,’ there was a 20 (or so) year respite where people actually cared about their neighbors, their community, this country. Not so much now.
Money. Money. MONEY is all anyone seems to care about. But why? What changed? What happened?
Housing was well constructed in the 1950s through mid-60s. American Lumber Standard Committee (ALSC) sanctioned 2 x 4” posts cut to 1½ x 3½” — a profit grab for the lumber industry — making new builds far less sturdy. Today’s contractors build post-frame as much as 18 to 24” apart, again to increase their already absurd profits. Earthquakes, fires, floods, severe weather, these new developments put up crap housing that require constant repair with even mild storms.
My mother-in-law turned 90 last April. She’s on Medicare, having Social Security taxes taken out of every paycheck for 60 years. These payments were supposed to give her medical coverage in old age. Since her 90th, Medicare will no longer cover her colonoscopies, or mostly any preventative procedure. Our govt wants her to die. Like NOW. She’s done giving up half her paycheck to SS, and our govt has no need for her. Our (not MY) president, and the majority of our congressmen and senators don’t care they OWE HER for the PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE they’ll get the rest of their lives.
Depressing? You bet! It’s going to get worse, so if you can’t handle the TRUTH go back to scrolling Insta or streaming Netflix, and stay blissfully ignorant pretending you’ll never get old and have to deal with the ugly, greedy TRUTH coming at ya.
Got parents? Even if you are not old, they’ll be getting there. What happens to them when they can’t afford assisted living, or there isn’t any because of the unrelenting greed of today’s development industry? Even better, what happens to YOU when you have to lay out your salary to cover your parents aging. Or is that out too? You’ll let ’em wallow in filth and neglect?
How did we get to this horrible greedy place, this place where half this country voted in the second coming of Hitler who made it very clear he only cares about himself and making the rich richer?
Have we always been this way — GREEDY and IGNORANT? According to Stanley Milgram’s study, we always have. While Self-interest is part of our nature — the greed — most of us are fundamentally followers. Influencers, like actors, models, musicians; and authority figures, like doctors, therapist, even politicians draw BELIEVERS. We accept, even participate in bad medicine, injustice, inequity, intolerance, racism, sexism, sometimes murder and even slaughter of millions following the status quo.
Milgram was a Jew. He wanted to find out what motivated Germans to turn on neighbors. Why would 90% of German citizens allow the slaughter of children on the same soccer team as their kids? Or passively watch the displacement and murder of Jews they once shared meals, holidays, and special occasions? Why would Germans agree, and even support genocide, rape, disembowelment while still alive, torture beyond any sense of sanity? Milgram wanted to know.
The MILGRAM EXPERIMENT, as it’s now known, revealed some striking and profound truths about Germans, and all of us.
It PROVED that humans are SHEEP, highly obedient to authority figures and willing to harm others when instructed to do so.
Humans are sheep, follow the flock, the crowd, influencers, salesmen, priests.
We FOLLOW because it’s easier than THINKING.
We blindly follow our parents’ beliefs in fantasies like God, or Jesus, with no proof either exist, or evidence that Christ was ever born. None whatsoever, though tax rolls have been found at Christ’s (ostensible) time, without mention of Jesus at all.
We adopt behavior that even we don’t like — that’s not the best of us — with justifications like “everyone does it!” Engaged with your cellphone while driving today? Most who do, don’t THINK they’re really increasing their odds of killing themselves or someone else by upwards of 25%.
Intoxicants, from drink to weed will not cure cancer. Alcohol is toxic for the body. Smoking weed is carcinogenic — cancer causing. And mental ‘health’ pharms are addictive and eat the crap out of your liver, among a host of other side effects. Hey, but everyone does them, right?
What Makes a Leader?
While Milgram’s experiment revealed most humans are essentially sheep, following a herd, whether family, friends, priests, or govts, SOME PEOPLE, a few outliers, are not. In fact, they lead the human flock.
Hitler did. Trump does. Oligarchs, like Musk, are leaders to many who are delusional enough to believe they too can become a billionaire. On the other side, Susan B. Anthony, FDR, MLK all moved this nation towards a more equitable country.
Are you a SHEEP or LEADER? If you’re thinking: I’M A LEADER, you’re likely lying to yourself. Humans lie to ourselves (and others) a LOT! Like following, lying is part of our nature.
WATCH the Milgram experiment. The odds are you’d be one of the 65% who tortured an unseen man with electric shocks to death, simply because someone politely asked you to do so. Not threatening, not aggressive. Just “Please continue,” was what the admin in the experiment asked. And the 65% claimed they were just ‘following directions’ (sheepishly) allowing them to deliver shocks that were lethal.
What happened to us, to humanity to turn us into greedy, self-absorbed monsters?
Perhaps we’ve always been this way. Or maybe not. Maybe there was a time humanity worked for the benefit of the group instead of just the SELF. I don’t know. What I do know is Milgram’s experiment gave us a window into our own psyche that PROVES humans are fundamentally sheep.
Armed with this knowledge, we can recognize (THINK: examine) when we’re blindly going along with the flock. And we can choose not to.
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