Anxiety as Energy- Dad and How He Humored Himself Around Life

Robert L. Ricketts 

Wit as Gentle Humor

How easy it is for one to laugh,
When lines aren't punched,
Or people trashed.
When biting comments meant to sting,
Are reduced to playful pithy things.
The quibbling quip, the ill timed phrase
Instead are met with joyous praise.
Give me the rhythm rhyme and rule
That helps relieve the words so cruel
And adds a lone redeeming tone
To any song that feels like home.  Susan R. Grout, 1998



I admire great wit and find that so much of life can be appreciated when one's wits are fully engaged and one is eager to laugh. My first homework assignment to most of my clients is: be aware and amused each day and then report back. This is just one of the blessings I got from my father who in his gentle way could make any heart melt with his warm humor and quick wit. I know this contributed to his success as a restaurateur. How did he develop this humor?

Dad was the baby of  his family and though treasured for that reason, he did not have an optimal up bringing. For one thing his mother left him and her other three children with their grandmother when he was only six months old and did not return until he was five! [I had to verify this with sister Trisha, even writing it was awful.] Then my Grandmother wanted her children back and took her case to court. Unbelievably the judge made the children decide where they wanted to live, Mother or their Father. The older three chose their Dad who had been involved with them all along. My Dad wanted to do this as well, but he chose to live with his mother because he felt sorry for her. Then, what a circus ensued! Every six months they would have to move in the middle of the night to avoid eviction and paying the landlord. One time when he was about eight,  Dad was eating cereal for dinner while his Mom was out on the town [it was the roaring twenties...], there was a knock on the door, he opened it and some men came in and repossessed the furniture. She said when she came home, "why did you open the door?" When he told this story he always laughed, he loved to entertain, even at his own expense. Obviously, this is not the recipe for family life, role models, or love relationships but curiously this man was all about love, laughter and making people feel good and comfortable. Also surprisingly he was an excellent business man with a strong work ethic and a head for figures.

Ah, but the toll this childhood had on his soul was unrelenting anxiety through most of his thirties. Surely his erratic upbringing set him up to be anxious but then, as most of the men in his era, he entered the war as a 21 year old. I know next to nothing about his stint on Okinawa, he told us "I dug latrines for three years,"  which I blithely believed until I read about Okinawa. Yeah, right. It was called "the worst theater of  WWII in the Pacific". So I doubt seriously it was nothing but the shovel for him. He never talked about it. This probably contributed to his anxiety attacks. [See the post on http://susansmagicfeather.blogspot.com/2011/03/influential-people-in-my-life-or-who.html 3/17/11 "Influential People in my Life" about Dad].

As I previously mentioned these attacks finally stopped the last time my mother brought him to the emergency room and a doctor said sternly "this has to stop, you had better change your life."  His change was wrought by a new job, selling our big house and buying his own restaurant. Getting him away from a rather difficult brother who was perpetually jealous of my Dad was an enormous improvement, but striking out on his own with a family to feed-yikes.

Did I mention another possible contributing factor? My Dad was drinking heavily. Excuse me if I am preaching to the choir, but one of the unfortunate facts about booze is it's a "depressive sedative drug". This drug initially relaxes and then it ends up being a stimulant especially when too much is consumed. That is why in moderation it is a 'feel good' experience, but with too much of a good thing, as in many things in life, it is detrimental. When he quit the restaurant downtown the doctor told him to take six months off, to pull himself together and start on a new course. The doctor also cautioned him "don't have more than one drink a day." Dad was fond of saying, "So I went out and bought a fishbowl."  My sister Sally and I still laugh remembering him in his lawn chair, drink in hand, while we were sweating our butts off cutting the grass. "You missed a spot," he'd say pointing. Amazingly he was able to draw up a new life for himself and he did recover fairly well from the months off. Yet he continued to over drink.

Years later when I was working for the local 'Community Alcohol and Recovery Center' I screwed up my courage to confront him about his drinking. "Dad," I said with shaking voice and utter sincerity, "I'm concerned about your drinking and from what I've learned, you are a 'maintenance alcoholic'." He looked interested and said, "Sue, what is that?" I said, "It is a person who is a "heavy steady" drinker, never really drunk but someone who maintains a certain percentage of alcohol in their system most days." He laughed, patted me on the arm and said "Never give up on me, Sue," then he pause and said, "heavy, steady, I like that." He used that term fondly about his drinking and to my knowledge it did not alter his behavior one iota. So, I did raise his consciousness but not in the way I intended. His drinking up until that time was always a puzzle to me, I never saw him drunk yet when he'd come to visit us our first stop, at his insistence, always was the liquor store. When he got his bottle he would clutch it and say "my security". He was a happy, cheerful, fun loving drinker who would occasionally burst into song. Not the usual sad profile of an alcoholic. He not only was successful at business but he was cherished by his family and had a host of loyal friends until he died. Nonetheless, I was constantly trying to save him from himself, I did so worry about him. I lost the battle years later-- he died of a heart attack, at only 67 years old. My husband and all of the brother-in-laws grieved him like a father, and all of us still tell funny stories about him. He was very well loved. Flaws? Yes. Wonderful, absolutely.

So, now that you know some of his history, how on earth was he able to control his anxiety? Obviously, not very well in his thirties but he improved as he aged. For one thing he threw himself into his new business and because it was his own venture he dragged my Mom, my sister Sally and me into the restaurant. Then as the littler ones aged they had a chance to work in the restaurant with our father. He was surrounded by hiring and by genetics with people who adored him. Quite a contrast to working with his brother. As a matter of fact, some of his employees worked at the restaurant the entire time he owned it, more than 25 years. As his business grew so did his confidence in choosing who he cared about, in other words, no more ass kissing. He was unfailingly respectful to everyone who walked into that restaurant and remarkably was able to greet everyone by name. This is thousands of customers and he could remember not only their name but also something personal about them. [It is just striking me, I have always been grateful for my good memory and that this is one of the characteristics I must have inherited from him, though I don't have thousands, only hundreds of names and histories to remember.] If a customer was rude he could handle them, best with humor. An example: a rather pretentious, seriously overdressed woman came in while I was waitressing. She asked to see a menu, popped on her glasses, read and exclaimed, "there is absolutely nothing on this menu that I would eat!"  "Lady," my Dad said, "the only thing not on that menu is spaghetti or hot dogs!" She left in a huff and we laughed and laughed.

 Taking charge, making the changes he needed and using his anxiety as energy was top on the list of taming the anxiety. Later,  letting go of how people perceived him or felt about him also helped. He even took a yoga class with my mother. Keep in mind this was in the late sixties when men at a yoga class were about as ordinary as if a llama stepped into the class. I was thrilled and said, "Great, how did it go?" "I threw my back out trying to be a pretzel" he said. At least he tried.

How to conquer anxiety, a partial list.

1. Use the anxiety for yourself as extra energy.  Think about how actors use their nervousness back stage as a punch to their performance.
2. Learn to pay attention to the body and read its signals. If anyone who is starting to have a panic would just slow their breathing [in extremis breathing into a paper bag], most panic attacks would be prevented.
3. Vow to live fearlessly each day, or as Sally says "carpe them diems". Ask yourself, "what is the worst thing that can happen?"  "Do you have to do this by yourself or could you ask for help?" "What small thing can I do today to protect myself from the [imagined?] outcome?"
4. Pregrieving?  Am I imagining how bad I might feel if and when this dreadful thing may or may not happen?  
5. Use the Serenity Prayer or a magic feather to realize that there are things that are in our control and things out of our control [people, places and things] and we must accept this and move on.
6. Distract yourself with a friend, a walk outside, a pet, a phone call, yoga, writing, a movie, bath, music, etc., etc.
7. Let go, remind yourself that the last time you checked you weren't a god or goddess and so in our humanness, the human brain is anciently wired for fear and for good reason we had to be alert so as not to be eaten by a predator.  
8. We can outsmart or train the brain which wants to go back into the fear groove by saying, "no thank you I've had enough of that" or by the distractions mentioned above.
9. Always try to be aware and amused at the world.

Since everyone has anxiety thanks to how our brains are wired, it is the wise person who uses that anxiety with relish and maybe even turns it into a passion. He did, he loved his work, his family his friends and to entertain everyone. I will always love my Dad.  I have learned the lessons he taught me, some good [memory, discipline, friendliness, business] and the not so good [ don't drink too much or it will shorten your life, driving too fast promotes tickets...] I will always be the grateful daughter. I just wish I could tell a joke like he could,  alas, I inevitably screw up the punch line.

susansmagicfeather copyright 2011 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved.