Cake, Pizza and the Problem Pest

The person before me was my sweet, lovable, charming, delightful, positive, funny, adorable, wonderful Niki. The same Niki who refers to work as "Worky Work" and shin splints as "pain in the shinny shins." On a good day Niki is a lark that sings show tunes. On a bad day Niki is a little ray of moonshine in a darkling dusk.

I wax poetic.

Niki is really sweet. And positive. And just... Nice. It's like, built IN to her nature nice.

And as she sat before me at Clark's Corner, being nice, and staying positive, and NOT falling apart AT ALL I realized, Niki was completely devastated.

Like nearly 25% of our little county of 35,000 residents Niki faces the prospect of unemployment. We don't know when. We don't know 100% how or even whether, but whatever the case, Niki's work situation is about to change dramatically. Her whole office could suffer.

And someone brought donuts.

And she was worried about her job. And worried about her future family and her training plan and her racing fees and the cost of healthy food. And she was worried about all the things she had planned to do as she developed in her career and how all that was up in arms and nothing was going to go as she had hoped and then there were donuts which she DID NOT EAT. But she might. Any day now. And that would meddle with all her progress. And her training. And how was she going to do it all?

And I remembered how I had been the last time my life had fallen apart. In fact, Niki had herself been one of the witnesses to my lamentations. It came to mind all I wanted at the time was to cry and cry and lament and you people with your stupid solutions can just go fly a kite. Because I don't need solutions what I need right now is to cry and to wallow and to Just Lament for a while. Why not? There's a whole BOOK of the Bible dedicated to lamentations. If Jeremiah could do it why couldn't I?
Because, as I found out, Lamentation doesn't actually help. That thing we call venting? That thing we tell ourselves we need time for and just need to DO for a while? Actual double blind bona fide scientific research shows that Lamentation only makes things worse.
For years my means of coping with problems in life was to sit at the kitchen table and a) gripe and b) knock back a pizza with beer and some chocolate cake after.
And what was worse, I still had the problem after the beer, pizza and chocolate cake were safely and firmly clinging to my hips.

It wasn't until I moved in with my house mate, Laura that I realized the beer and pizza only made the problem worse. Not only did I feel awful about the problem, I now felt awful about myself. Was stressed out about how much weight the beer and pizza was going to result in (actually did the math - 1600 cal of pizza, 500 cal cake, 720 cal beer - almost a pound in one sitting). Laura had this annoying habit of listening for a while until I'd laid out the whole horror of the situation, comfortingly nodding a head and adding the appropriate "that jerk!" And "those idiots." Where expected. And then getting out a pen and paper. And making lists. People I should call. Things I could try. Potential solutions to the problem.
Laura didn't just LISTEN to me lament. She helped SOLVE the underlying problem.

Which is of course a big part of her strategy of maintaining a healthy size 6-8 almost effortlessly. When Laura is upset about something, the first thing she does is call someone who will a) listen AND b) help her work on a solution to the problem.

Then, she gets to work. AFTER that she has a cup of tea. Takes a walk. Reads a dime store novel. There is no pizza. Or beer.

She almost never resorts to chocolate cake.

I call her - and a handful of others I've picked up since I learned this skill - my problem friends. It took some getting used to. At first the need to lament almost overcame me as much as the need for pizza and chocolate cake. The problem solving thing annoyed me. I didn't, after all, lament about something in order to SOLVE the problem. I did it to... I needed it for... I wanted... Well, come to think of it, I didn't need it. Or want it. It was just a bad habit I'd picked up. An unproductive way of making my problems worse. Not a coping strategy after all but a Non-coping strategy. A way to ignore rather than fix my problems.

So as I sat across from Niki taking notes and drawing up a game plan on my Blackberrry I realized: I was a problem friend. I had become someone who would listen and nod and say "that jerk" and "what a lousy way to behave..." In all the right places. And then. Get Out My Cellular Notepad and Start QWERTY writing a potential solution to the problem.

For a moment I wondered whether Niki was thinking what I used to think about Laura: just stop being so blasted HELPFUL and let me get down to the real work of accomplishing NOTHING and making my problem WORSE.

I thought about shutting up and letting her vent so she didn't get annoyed with me. And then I realized: I didn't care if I was a pest. I just cared about Niki. Like crazy. Enough to be a worse pest than tse tse flies or killer bees if it meant I could help her make things better.

BTW, you can hear this whole thing from Niki's perspective.

http://nikimariesjourney.blogspot.com/2010/10/insanity-day-3-time-to-take-even-better.html