Self-Talk In Action

Introduction

Ageing isn’t all bad … I think I’ve acquired some wisdom, and at least the money is better. But, being an athlete, I find the inevitable decline of my body a bit hard to take, especially as I have a long history of judging my performance. Sometimes I begin to feel resigned to putting sport behind me … but then I catch myself and dig back in. It’s a constant struggle, and I’m having to talk myself down from negativity time and time again. This post explores the role of “self-talk” in how we see ourselves, and what it “sounds” like when this self-talk is put into action.

What is self-talk?

My cycling friend Mike Ceely, a licensed psychotherapist and founder of Ceely Sports, an athlete coaching company, describes self-talk on his blog, here. It’s a way that an inner voice responds to, and reinforces, a belief system. For example, he considers a gymnast who is a perfectionist: “Maybe her first coach taught her that mistakes were unacceptable. Because of this, her belief system is ‘people won't like me if I make mistakes.’”

Ceely goes on to explain, “The key to changing your beliefs is to listen to the language—often subconscious—that we use to evaluate ourselves.” I completely relate to this, as I beat down the nascent belief system that I’m too old to be an athlete. This comes into play regularly, when I try to keep up with the high school mountain bike racers whom I coach. My self-talk starts up when we’re five minutes into our ride and cranking up a 10% grade. This is the hardest part of the whole ride for me, as I really need to warm up but the kids clearly don’t. So I have this battle of voices: “I’m just not warmed up,” one says, and the other replies, “I’m making excuses. I’m just too old for this.”

Can self-talk be tamed?

What I experience going up that first hill is a fairly typical dialogue for those who don’t just give in and accept the unhelpful belief system. Ceely advises, “Stop using negative self-talk, and start using positive self-talk. This is the ‘outside-in’ approach. Tell yourself something long enough, and you start to believe it. Instead of saying ‘I’ll never get better’ say, ‘I want to get better.’”

Of course this doesn’t mean I should tell myself, “I will get younger.” Ceely points out that “positive self-talk must be realistic. Saying ‘I will win’ when you’re up against tough competition is not smart. Instead say something positive and unconditional like, ‘strong’ or ‘smooth.’”

The psychologist and author Benjamin Hardy, in this article, points out that past success can actually make it harder to stand up to negative self-talk. He notes, “Some of the most difficult negative thoughts will relate to your past. If you’ve been relatively successful in the past, your mind will always make you believe that you’re not as good as you used to be. Your mind will try to convince you that you’ve lost your touch.” In my experience, this seems like a very rational approach. After all, I have all this data—heart rate, average speed, stopwatch times up my favorite climbs—showing me that yes, my body is slowing down, my power output dwindling.

Hardy goes on, “The first step of silencing your mind is to not believe the negative and limiting thoughts that will relentlessly plague you if you’re growing and learning. See these thoughts for what they are—your subconscious wants certainty and predictability.” How true. So often I’ll be riding and will try to match the speed of a kid I used to drop, only to discover that my legs have checked out for the day. My body used to be pretty predictable … it performed pretty much the same, day after day. Now it’s like all the planets have to line up for me to feel “on.”

So what is to be done, when that negative voice comes over my mental PA system reminding me I’m in my 50s? Do I just ignore it? No, it’s more complicated than that. Hardy explains, “Simply trying to avoid negative thoughts is not enough. You must load-up on goal-directed stimuli, which include information, behaviors, environments, etc.”

Ceely describes the inner dialogue really well in this article, saying:

The inner critic is a natural psychological mechanism that all humans have. Its purpose is to problem-solve by pointing out your (real or imagined) errors and flaws. Historically, its purpose was to protect you. Pointing out your errors back in the caveman days was advantageous.

Because your brain uses language to represent ideas, it’s easy to confuse the messages of the inner critic as your own. Instead, think of the inner critic as a linguistic personification of a primal survival mechanism. It’s useful, but tends to overreact and be a bit hyperbolic… The key is to know that your inner critic is just one of many voices, or internal mechanisms, that try to communicate information to you. Think of your inner critic and other internal voices like members of a board of directors, where you are the Founder, CEO, and majority shareholder. You’re in charge. Your job is to listen to the board members, take their words into consideration, then make executive decisions.

Here’s the cool thing: you don’t have to believe everything “you” think. This means you can take the role of the higher self, the observer, the one who dis-identifies from the automatic narrative playing in the background. 

How this plays out fascinates me.

Self-talk in action

All year I’ve been focusing on mountain biking, which for the Albany High team means trail rides of generally 2-3 hours, with lots of breaks along the way. This past weekend, one of the guys on my road team emailed the group suggesting a (road) ride up Mount Diablo, which would be over 80 miles—twice my longest ride of the year—with lots of climbing and very few breaks. As you might imagine, this would be a real stretch for me. But I cautiously accepted, replying, “Sounds good, if you don’t mind a mellow pace,” etc., which I knew would come across as a coded message that actually meant “I’m gonna try to rip your legs off,” because that’s just the typical bike racer ruse. But I meant it … I’ve ridden so little on the road, my road bike still feels weird to me, like the handlebars are way too narrow. I literally haven’t ridden with the team once this year.

As we headed over the Berkeley hills the little voice in my head popped up and said, “I wonder if there’ll be a sprint.” As I’ve described here, and as you’ve surely noticed yourself, one’s self-talk leverages his or her entire history and doesn’t have to spell everything out. The sprint in question is the inevitable race to a particular pedestrian crossing in Moraga, a challenge which virtually every group I’ve ridden with in the last 30 years has taken up, until a bridge washed out and disrupted the tradition. The last time I rode that route, the new bridge was still under construction and had just one lane with a traffic signal installed, so for the group to make it through without stopping would be a toss-up.

Now the voices in my head started bickering:

“If there’s a sprint I should sit it out. This is my first group ride in months.”

“That’s nonsense. I always sprint.”

“It’ll be shoulder-to-shoulder, slicing & dicing, I’m not ready.”

“I’m always ready. I know how to do this.”

“What if my chain breaks under full power?” [This notion arose because recently, pre-riding a mountain bike race course, my chain did break and I crashed.]

“Stop being ridiculous.”

The negative voice, you’ll notice, was just making excuses, the kind that would serve the “I’m too old” belief system (which Ceely rightly abbreviates BS, pun intended). My self-talk CEO didn’t explain his rationale because he wants to rule with an iron fist. The problem with that kind of leadership, of course, is getting real buy-in from everyone. My inner critic wouldn’t be silenced.

We made our way down Pinehurst Road and the speed ramped up. Over the painful little climb on Canyon Road, a couple of guys were drilling it on the front, clearly starting to set up their sprint.

“I’ll probably get dropped right here and miss the sprint.”

“Pfff. No way. Start at the front, drift back, and work back up.”

“Missing the sprint would be kinda nice.”

“Missing the sprint is out of the question.”

Down the other side of the hill my inner critic worried about safety.

“There’s a giant pothole somewhere. It destroyed your car tire last year.”

“It’s a paved descent. This is just not that complicated.”

As we headed toward the sprint, the pace ramped higher and higher. Suddenly D— launched a blistering early attack, starting at the back and flying by us on the left. Everyone dove for his wheel. I got gapped and shifted into my highest gear to chase.

“They’re gone. I missed it. I don’t have the jump I needed.”

“They’re right there. At this speed the slipstream is huge. I can latch on.”

“What am I even doing trying to mix it up with these guys? I never had a sprint to begin with! I’m not a fast-twitch guy! What am I doing here?”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

If you were starting to get bored, fear not … this is where things get interesting. As you may have noticed, my inner critic isn’t very sophisticated. As Ceely described, this critic operates mainly out of fear: fear of failure, fear of injury. It’s old messaging, like a broken record. But an upside of being old is that I have a wealth of experience in road racing bunch sprints, and the movements have become so ingrained, they become almost automatic. My neocortex loves the tactical complexity required, and finally the thrill of the hunt becomes irresistible. All the negative self-talk drops away … I’m like a cat going after a laser pointer. Now the self-talk is more focused and intelligent … it hones in on the “goal-directed stimuli” described in Hardy’s article.

“B— is on the back but he’s just getting going. He’s the fastest sprinter here. If I get his wheel I’m golden.”

“And there’s his attack! And I don’t need a jump—I’m already going faster than the group because I’ve been chasing! Getting dropped was a gift! I love this sport!”

“Nobody saw him jump—his wheel is wide open! Get it! Get it! Harder, harder, drill it, I’m almost there!”

“I’ve got the wheel! Hold that wheel! Hold it! Shit, I’m golden!”

In case you haven’t had the pleasure of a cycling bunch sprint, this was the part where I was putting out all the power I was capable of, but without the wind resistance I’d have fought if riding alone. It’s a bit like catching a wave, I suppose … this extraordinary rush of speed and the delicious sensation of doing something I’d be incapable of if not latched on to my teammate’s wheel. Meanwhile, I could tell from my peripheral vision, and from the decrease in sound, that the rest of the group was gone. We’d made the jump to light-speed.

“Can I get around B—? No. I’m topped out. Can’t do it.” [This isn’t technically negative self-talk … it’s just stating a fact.]

“God, what a rush.”

“Second place in Walking Man is not bad.”

“Holy shit, who the hell is that?!”

Another rider inexplicably came flying by right as we reached the pedestrian crossing. It was Y—, D—’s  14-year-old son and a rising star in both road and mountain bike racing in NorCal. He’s got the build of a climber, which should make such a phenomenal sprint impossible, except that he’s clearly hugely talented. He also played his cards almost perfectly … the only reason he didn’t beat B— in the end is that he chose my wheel, probably assuming I’d start to pass B— and then (and only then) he’d launch his own sprint and overtake both of us. But I didn’t go fast enough, and didn’t start to pass B—… I just kind of sat there. Y— probably won’t overestimate me again. He’ll be going directly for B—’s wheel next time.

Did my negative self-talk start up again after the sprint? No, I’m more realistic than that. What would be the point of faulting myself after the fact, especially when I’d done a good sprint? Besides, since Y— races against my Albany High team, I automatically considered his feat from the perspective of coach. (My result doesn’t matter, it’s just for kicks.) Besides, I had more on my mind anyway: we still had Mount Diablo to tackle.

Epilogue

Sure, there was a little more self-talk on the way up the mountain, as I tried to keep up with Y— for as long as possible while still having enough in the tank to make the summit, and then make it home. But the inner critic quiets down a fair bit when adrenaline and endorphins enter the picture and things are going well. I ended up climbing Diablo a shocking nine minutes faster than last time (which was all the way back in September, when I was still coasting on my fitness from my DIY Everest Challenge). On the way home, I kept waiting for my body to give out, but it never did, and I even clocked a decent time on Wildcat Canyon, the last climb. Next time my inner critic starts naysaying, my inner CEO will simply reply, “You know nothing. Remember that Diablo ride? I got this.”

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The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum

Vlog

This week’s post is available as a vlog. Just kick back, crack open a beer, and click below.

Or, if you prefer my text to my mug, below is the classic format.

Introduction

Five weeks into shelter-in-place, it’s still hard to find toilet paper. I’ve never seen anything like it—but did you know this isn’t our nation’s first paranoia-induced toilet paper shortage? It turns out there’s a lot we didn’t know about this basic consumer product. In this post I’ll delve into the following:

• The great TP famine of ‘73
• Non-pandemic toilet paper hoarding
• How unnecessary toilet paper actually is
• The psychology of toilet paper stockpiling
• Toilet paper hoarding as microcosm

Ah, “microcosm” … there’s a real English-major word for you. Don’t worry, I won’t get all eggheaded on ya. How could I, with such a low topic?

(Check out these stoked shoppers. One is saying to the other, “Look, not only do they have toilet paper here, but a choice of brands! It’s like 2019!”)

The great TP famine of ‘73

The world has seen pandemics before, and it’s seen worse. But this bizarre toilet paper hoarding? Actually, that’s happened before too, and what’s more, there was no global crisis precipitating it. This was back in 1973, and as described here, it all started with a congressman who, irritated with a relatively unimportant pulp paper shortage, which was “allegedly caused by companies that increased paper exports to avoid Federal price controls,” took to the American media to drum up support for his constituents. The press ignored him until he reframed the issue as a potential toilet paper shortage. This they jumped on, as did news agencies globally. Pockets of Americans started stockpiling, though this fell short of a national phenomenon. Then Johnny Carson got involved.

Johnny worked the news tidbit into his opening routine, during which—struggling to keep a straight face—he declared, “I wanna tell you, it is serious.” After that broadcast, everyone went nuts and started hoarding toilet paper, just as we are now. Perhaps they were being even sillier, believing in a nonexistent supply problem without even having an ostensible cause to point to. (Even before the Carson piece, the Scott Paper Company went on television to confirm that their production was as high as ever.)

Is it ever rational to second-guess the toilet paper supply?

There certainly are circumstances in which it’s perfectly rational to expect a dearth of toilet paper. One of these is large public events. I learned early on to bring my own TP roll to bike races, as the portable toilets often run out. One year at the Everest Challenge stage race, a guy coming out of the San-O-Let warned me, “There’s no paper. I had to use my arm warmers.” I thought he was joking, until I got in there … how disgusting. Fortunately, I’d planned ahead.

The other time you should BYOTP is when traveling to certain countries. Some of them simply don’t use toilet paper (more on this later) and others tend to run out due to theft. A Quora discussion on the topic “Why is there no toilet paper in Chinese public toilets?” tackled this apparently widespread problem. A few respondents explained the rationale behind the behavior:

It’s because they used to [be] poor or they [are] actually poor now … in 2018, Chinese per capita disposable income is 28228 Yuan or about 4000$ per year. And rural people’s per capita disposable income is 14617 Yuan or about 2000$ per year, 40 Yuan per day. Let’s say one roll of toilet paper is maybe 2 Yuan, so it’s almost 1/20 of rural people’s income for one day.

For some old people, extreme poverty had a destructive influence on their morality—Stealing will let you survive and being lawful makes you (and your children) starve to death.

One correspondent even provided this security camera footage.

Lest you think only Internet randos are reporting this, the New York Times wrote here about how technology is being used in China to address the problem: 

The authorities in Beijing are fighting back, going so far as to install high-tech toilet paper dispensers equipped with facial recognition software in several restrooms. Before entering restrooms in the park, visitors must now stare into a computer mounted on the wall for three seconds before a machine dispenses a sheet of toilet paper, precisely two feet in length. If visitors require more, they are out of luck. The machine will not dispense a second sheet to the same person for nine minutes. 

Still, the prevalence of toilet paper theft is subject to exaggeration. One person in the Quora thread chimed in to state that he generally has no trouble finding toilet paper, providing ample photographic evidence. He also shared this photo of a method used to deter waste:

Perhaps I’ll steal that idea and post a handy usage guide in my own bathroom!

Is toilet paper even necessary?

Sometimes, a westerner’s inability to find toilet paper is a matter of foreign custom. Russians, for example, used scrap paper until fairly recently. As described here, their first toilet paper factory was built in 1969, and due to low output the product was strictly rationed. One citizen recalled, “The lucky ones who managed to buy it would thread rolls on a string and walk home wearing their spoils like a necklace, to the envy of passers-by.”

This scarcity of toilet paper in Russia continued for decades. A respondent to this Quora thread wrote, “I was in Russia for one month in 1985. There were baskets of ripped up newspapers in each bathroom stall.” A friend of mine who visited in the ‘80s reported a similar scenario, and in fact accidently walked in on two maids as they cleaned his hotel room. They were caught red-handed with the roll of toilet paper he’d brought from home, passing it back and forth and giggling. It must have seemed absurdly posh to them.

Moreover, many countries simply don’t want toilet paper. This fascinating thread provides lots of testimony from people, mainly in India, who consider it disgusting that anybody uses toilet paper instead of water. Some examples: 

Unless I live in a desert, I would never want to carry my mess in my pants for days!

Let’s imagine, a crow shits on your shoulder or head … Will you still use a tissue paper to clean it? 

Water is more efficient and practical for a populous country like India where we have plenty of rivers and ponds. It will be quite impractical to switch to tissues.

This valiantly but imperfectly translated assessment actually blames the western toilet paper tradition for the Black Death:

Britain enraptured from crapping from the windows … within the eighteenth century and victimization pans to shit in rooms so property somebody carry it and inflicting plague and Black Death to toilet rolls. We washed our bottoms and washed our hands at the moment. So, no plague. No Black Death.

One helpful respondent offers this challenge: 

Put some Nutella on your right hand. Then wipe it off with a piece of paper, preferably toilet paper. Put some Nutella on your left hand. Now wash this with water, preferably a faucet. Now touch and smell both the hands. The right hand would smell of Nutella and you may feel some remnant on it too. But the left hand neither smells of Nutella nor there is anything to touch. Now imagine. Put your bodily waste instead of Nutella. Now tell me, which one is more hygienic??

From this same thread I learned that Pakistanis also prefer water to toilet paper; that Italians also do; and that an American who lived in India for 38 years learned to prefer water to toilet paper. He writes, “There is nothing better than a jet of water to pressure-wash the exhaust port of your Death Star.”

Within this anti-TP context, it’s hard for me to understand why—at a time when people all over the world are dying of a horrible virus—Americans are getting so worked up about their preferred method of, uh, cleaning up. What’s the big deal, when toilet paper alternatives clearly exist? Maybe it’s because America is also out of hand sanitizer?

Which brings us to …

The psychology of toilet paper stockpiling

Chances are, lots of people hoard toilet paper simply because others are doing it. Imitation is perhaps the quintessential human behavior: it’s how we all learned to talk, after all. Where such copycat behavior is concerned, rest assured very little contemplation of supply chain fundamentals is going on.

Beyond that, this hoarding behavior may give us some sense of control at a time when we feel we have little. As articulated by this article in The Conversation, “Stocking up on toilet paper is … a relatively cheap action, and people like to think that they are ‘doing something’ when they feel at risk.” The article also points out, “Modern economies run on trust and confidence. COVID-19 is breaking down that trust. People are losing confidence that they will be able to go outside and get what they need when they need it.”

I have to think the CDC’s reversal on wearing masks hasn’t helped maintain this trust. “You don’t need masks,” they told us, and look what happened: those who defied the CDC and hoarded masks anyway are now almost the only people who have them. In this way cynicism and distrust have been reinforced.

Toilet paper hoarding as microcosm

There is no overall supply problem with toilet paper, and actual usage of this product is not increasing. If anything, we’re all scared shitless. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) Therefore, if nobody altered their behavior in any way—that is, if they purchased toilet paper on the same schedule they always have—we would all continue to have plenty.

And yet, in the short term we don't, because too many people are behaving irrationally. It doesn't take unanimous foolishness to create a problem; just a critical mass. After all, it doesn’t help me to think rationally about the toilet paper factories running at full capacity, because irrational behavior is creating outsized demand. The shortage, in short, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The paranoid and/or highly organized types have far, far more toilet paper than they need, while the optimistic and/or disorganized among us are running out. The clear thinkers don’t get to lord their sensible approach over anyone; instead, they’re trampled by the stampeding masses.

In a more general sense, one downside of freedom is our vulnerability in the face of what can amount to crowdsourced public policy. Consider the problem of non-vaccinators (aka anti-vaxxers): they don't perceive diseases like measles or HPV as a threat because they've never encountered them, so they declare these diseases a non-threat and stop vaccinating their children. By behaving ignorantly, they are creating widespread problems that affect everyone in their cohort, and sometimes beyond. Measles, for example, could be eradicated worldwide if everybody were vaccinated; instead, it persists and is making a comeback. (As reported by the CDC, last year saw more than 22 outbreaks, with well over a thousand victims, here in the US—a country where this disease was thought to be eliminated 20 years ago.)

This same phenomenon could happen with COVID-19, as frustrated citizens demand an end to shelter-in-place and/or ignore the rules. By mistaking the success of social distancing for a lack of need for it, they lead us back into danger. Lashing out at the authority they’re tired of bending to, they err on the side of undue optimism. Oddly, this is almost the reverse of the toilet paper irrationality: in that case, they’re being unduly paranoid about something they have relatively easy influence over. As the Conversation article notes, TP hoarding “is an example of ‘zero risk bias,’ in which people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount.” In other words, it’s easier to hoard toilet paper than to shelter in place … never mind the return on investment.

Where the microcosm breaks down

Fortunately, there is enough toilet paper to go around, ultimately, and we'll reach a point where so many people have so much stockpiled, they'll eventually stop hoarding it. Their garages will get so overrun with TP, they'd feel silly buying more, and will finally learn to pass up their next opportunity to continue stockpiling. Eventually, the shelves will be replenished, and then the hysteria will die down and we'll go back to normal, which consists of all Americans having enough TP in their homes that they don't worry about it. Supply and demand will once again be in perfect balance. You might call it “hoard immunity.”

Alas, the world's overall resources don't work like that ... there really isn’t enough to go around, which is why a lot of people are malnourished, don't have educational opportunities, don't have great access to affordable health care, etc. The supply and demand of money has never been in perfect balance. Just about everybody wants more money, and it never starts to look ridiculous to stockpile it. Industries like advertising and marketing exist to increase demand, irrespective of the target market's standard of living, which in turn drives up monetary greed.

This brings us to what may be the harshest, most protracted aspect of this pandemic: long after the toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and mask shortages are over; when the shelter-in-place rules have finally been relaxed; well after the coronavirus has either run its course or been thwarted by a vaccine, we will likely be stuck in a terrible recession. And unlike the toilet paper shortage, it won’t affect people equally. Once again, the have-nots will take it the hardest.

Obviously there’s not much I can do about COVID-19 or its economic devastation. But where toilet paper is concerned, I will do my part: I haven't stockpiled any and I'm not going to. This is my symbolic stand, the simple, tiny gesture I’ll make in solidarity. I'll leave some toilet paper for the next guy and if I run out, so be it. Life will go on. (Or not.)

More reading on the pandemic

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• COVID Wristbands

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Flakage

Introduction

This post is about flakage. As in, flaking: standing somebody up when you had plans together. Fear not, this won’t be a gripe-fest—this blog is not a forum for me to complain about such stuff. In fact, I occasionally flake on people myself.

In this post, I’ll start by considering some of the common causes of flakage; the types of flakage; and the types of people who flake. Then I’ll unveil my Flakage Toolkit, perhaps our best weapon in the War on Flakage. (“What?” you’re asking, “There’s a War on Flakage?” Well, there is now.)

Causes of flakage

Of course there are all kinds of reasons that a person could fail to meet up with you as agreed. It would be pointless to try cataloguing all of them. But there are a few general categories that occur again and again. Here is my list of the top three:

Lack of inclination

Sometimes, a person will commit to something he or she really doesn’t want to do, because he or she just doesn’t know how to politely decline an invitation or reject a plan. I know this is a big problem because in my Health class in high school we did a whole unit on “Refusal Skills.” I went through a great number of drills practicing how to say no to drugs, alcohol, and sex (none of which, by the way, were ever actually offered to me). Those who didn’t pay attention in Health class as kids may now find themselves agreeing to plans they have not intention of carrying out. This buys them time to figure out how to wiggle out of the arrangement later. Often as not, they never face the music and never cancel the plans, and thus end up flaking.

Disorganization

Sometimes someone accepts an offer in good faith, only to discover that he totally forgot about something else he’d already committed to. He has every intention of letting you know, but never seems to be near the phone or the computer when he remembers to contact you. So he stands you up, and then tries in vain to remember to apologize.

Overcomplicated life

Sometimes your friend accepts an offer in good faith, and doesn’t have any scheduled conflicts, but hours or even minutes before heading out, something happens and there’s no wiggle room in his oversubscribed life to let him recover. For example, the toddler suddenly projectile-vomits and thus can’t go to his play date. Or the dog escapes and heads for the hills. Or your friend’s spouse suddenly has to work late and will miss the carpool.

Types of flakage

As an early participant in the etymological life of the term “flakage,” I propose that we break down flakage into four categories.

Advance flakage

Advance flakage is usually committed by person who is ambivalent about a suggested activity, and/or knows he’s disorganized and really isn’t sure of his availability, and/or or knows his life is too complicated to guarantee he’ll be able to keep any commitment. He’ll hem and haw and give you a less-than-certain answer when you propose the activity. That way, if he fails to show up, he didn’t really stand you up, exactly, because he never fully committed to the activity in the first place.

Last-minute flakage

This happens when, due to any of the three causes listed above and/or any of the myriad other possible causes, the flaker cancels at the last minute rather than actually standing you up. The telltale sign of last-minute flakage is when your friend phones you up shortly before the meeting time and instead of asking a very quick question like “I forgot to ask, what should I bring?” he just shoots the breeze for awhile. It dawns on you that if he were keeping the appointment, he’d skip the chitchat since he’d be talking with you in person very shortly. The chitchat is his way of easing you into the bad news.

Last-minute flakage doesn’t always involve chitchat, of course. Often it involves your friend making a lavish explanation, like his toddler projectile-vomiting on his fleeing dog.

Quasi-flakage

This is when somebody keeps you waiting awhile but eventually does show up. How aggravating this is naturally depends on how late the person is. Five minutes is a non-event. Twenty minutes is a bit of a problem, and so on. (Sometimes flakage will take a hybrid form. For example, quasi-last-minute flakage involves your friend calling to say he’ll be late.) In the worst case, your friend is so late that severe animosity develops, ruining the activity that you’re getting together for in the first place. Once, a friend of a friend was supposed to pick me up at Fremont Bart, which I can tell you is not a cool place to hang, and was like an hour and a half late. This person’s body was never found. Okay, I exaggerate—but we sure didn’t bond during the subsequent drive.

Of course quasi-flakage shouldn’t be confused with being “fashionably late.” (This term is a bit of a misnomer, I think. Appearing to be too busy to make it on time, or so popular as to be waylaid on your way to the meeting, will surely never go out of fashion.) There’s also what I call “mercifully late,” where it is assumed the hosts are behind in their preparations and the guests give them some extra time before showing up.

Complete flakage

This is of course when the person simply doesn’t show. There is very little chance of anything mitigating the obnoxiousness of this. The person may attempt a retroactive advance flakage, claiming that he had never actually promised to come. Or the person may later describe how the dog almost asphyxiated on the toddler’s vomit and had to be hospitalized. Or, worst of all, the flakage is never explained or apologized for.

Co-flakage

This occurs with spouses (or spouse equivalents) and can take several forms. One is that one member of a couple has gotten the time wrong and leads the other astray. Both parties are at fault because the person led astray should know by now not to trust his or her spouse. Another form of co-flakage is when a husband commits quasi-flakage or complete flakage because he does not know about the commitment his wife has made on his behalf. Both parties are at fault here, too, because surely the wife told the husband about it, but he wasn’t listening, and she should know better than to assume he was. (Of course either spouse can play either role here; I was merely avoiding “he/she” pronoun Hell.)

Types of flakers

Once again, I must be careful not to oversimplify. All kinds of people flake. But a thorough survey of flakage, which to my knowledge has never been conducted, would probably show that most flakage is carried out by one of four types of flaker. Here are those types.

The “pleaser”

By “pleaser” I mean the person who can’t bear to let somebody down, even for a moment, and who thus agrees to a plan he doesn’t have any intention of carrying out. This type of person is at high risk for both advance flakage and complete flakage. He has a tendency to suffer terribly after flaking, because admitting he let you down is terribly uncomfortable for him.

The Type B personality

The Type B personality actually means it when he says he’ll show up, but accidentally flakes because he’s literally unaware of what time it is and sometimes even what day it is. He’s not much for advance flakage because, not being the type to hold himself accountable for much, he doesn’t imagine that anybody else would hold him accountable either—so why hedge? This type also isn’t at serious risk for last-minute flakage, because he’s usually unaware that he’s even missing the rendezvous, so it wouldn’t occur to him to phone in the upcoming flakage. He is, of course, highly likely to commit quasi-flakage or complete flakage.

Note that the Type B flaker doesn’t always irritate the flakee: one Type B flaking on another Type B seldom causes any animosity. With B/B quasi-flakage, neither party notices if the other is late because time has almost no meaning for these people.

The friction generally develops when a Type B make plans with a Type A. For example, when I was on the UCSB cycling team, I made road trip plans with a Type B guy we called Sven (due to his utter lack of Nordic features). Sven was to pick me up at noon on Friday to drive to where the next day’s race would be held. At the stroke of noon I was waiting on the curb, bag packed. After twenty minutes I went inside and phoned him. No answer. For the next several hours I alternated between waiting on the curb and going inside to phone him. Finally I gave up and, around 3 p.m., while I was frantically going through my phone list looking for somebody else to get a ride with, Sven phoned me. I expected a litany of excuses for his being so late, but instead he simply said, “What’s up?” I asked if he was still going to the race. “Yeah, of course. How soon can you be ready?” I reminded him we’d agreed to meet at noon. He said, “Uh, yeah, so … what time is it now?”

The pawn

The full name of this flaker is “pawn caught in a deadly game.” It refers to the person I alluded to above whose life is too complicated to allow appointments to always be confidently made and reliably kept. Working parents with commutes and day care and trick knees and old cars and demanding careers can build up pretty bad track records, but I cut them more slack than other types of flakers.

I don’t consider myself a flake, but I often feel like a pawn, or maybe a rook, caught in a deadly game. For example, this weekend I promised my wife I’d take our younger daughter to her soccer game. But I committed advance flakage by introducing a caveat: if my bike ride took too long, I’d have to phone her and bail out (i.e., commit last-minute flakage). My wife understood, because I was riding with my bike club, so how early I could be home depended on countless factors: how far we rode; how late everybody got started; how fast we all felt like riding; whether or not anybody punctured; etc. I ended up making good on the original plan, but committed quasi-flakage by getting home eight minutes later than the time we’d agreed on. Now, suppose my wife suddenly realized that we were supposed to bring snack to soccer game, meaning I would have to stop at the store on the way: then we’d be committing quasi-co-flakage. I would be partially responsible for it, given the hardship my own advance and quasi-flakage had added to my wife’s already complicated morning: hers would be a classic case of a pawn caught in a deadly game. But my wife is no flake, and we weren’t on snack duty, and Lindsay and I made it to the game with minutes to spare.

The career flaker

Some people are just flakes, and they have no excuse, and no remorse, and in fact basically never make good on anything. They’re different than the Type B flaker because he at least he does show up sooner or later most of the time, and has good intentions. The career flaker turns flaking into something close to a passive-aggressive act.

The Flakage Toolkit

You might be wondering, what’s the point of all this classification? Well, that’s where the Flakage Tooklit comes in. The Toolkit offers four forms of assistance in the War on Flakage:

1. Some perspective, to ease the pain of being a flakee;
2. A technique for preventing advance flakage;
3. A method for dealing with Type B flakers;
4. A handy reference chart for predicting flakage.

The Toolkit doesn’t include tips for reforming the flakers in your life. Attempting to change another person’s behavior is as difficult as gathering water in a sieve.

Perspective for the flakee

When somebody flakes on you, you’re going to feel dissed. This person has wasted your time, shown a lack of respect, and may end up making you—yes, you, the innocent party—feel lame. It’s hard not to take it personally when you’ve made plans that aren’t kept. If the flaker is somebody you consider a good friend, this can be even more painful.

Now that we’ve examined the various flakage modes, you may be better equipped to handle broken commitments. For example, it may be helpful, when making plans, to keep an eye out for advance flakage that might, to the untrained eye, look like actual commitment. Meanwhile, this is the time to identify disorganized, Type B, or overcommitted people and set your expectations accordingly. And if you’re entering into a complicated plan with various parties, you can gauge your own risk of inadvertently co-flaking. Above all, an appreciation of the causes of flakage, the types of flaker, and the reasons for flakage may help you take things less personally.

A final bit of perspective: when a close friend has flaked on you, ask yourself, has this person flaked before? If not, you can console yourself that this is just a fluke occurrence, not a sign of ill will or disrespect. If the friend has flaked on you before, you might consider whether he is a disingenuous pleaser, an unreliable Type B, or a career flaker with whom you should consider not making future plans.

Preventing advance flakage

I can recommend two ways of preventing advance flakage. One is to remove the RSVP component of the planned activity. For example, I’ll e-mail my bike club and ask if anybody wants to ride at such-and-such time, and get a rough count of who’s showing up—but I’ll make it clear that the group will not be waiting up for anybody who arrives late. A person isn’t likely to commit advance flakage if his response is not required, and nobody’s time will be wasted.

The other technique is more difficult and can be applied only gradually over a series of planned activities. It is based on my Refusal Skills training from Health class and involves teaching the spineless pleasers how to get over their discomfort with declining your invitation (or declining to respond). What you do is invite your pleaser friends to activities you’re pretty sure they’d not even be tempted to commit to. For example, I’ve sent e-mails to my bike club saying, “Would anybody like to ride up Mount Diablo and then over Morgan Territory Road, returning via Happy Valley and Wildcat Canyon? It’s 125 miles, with 12,000 feet of climbing. We’ll leave at 6 sharp, and it’ll be surgical—no coffee breaks.” Just to further encourage the pleasers to speak their mind, I like end such e-mails with “You’re either with me or against me.” On one occasion I was delighted to get a single-word reply—“Against”—from a guy whose responses hadn’t previously been so definitive. If the pleasers among your friends get enough of these absurd invitations, they may be emboldened to begin declining other invitations that sound halfway (if only halfway) intriguing.

Dealing with Type B flakers

Type Bs abound. Given the number of people who haven’t dropped dead of a heart attack, we have to assume that Type Bs may even be the majority. So how do we keep them from flaking on us?

The answer is, try to make plans that put you in charge of the activity. Consider my tale of woe about the road trip with Sven: my anguish stemmed largely from being dependent upon Sven for a ride. He may have been Type B and unpredictable, but at least he had a fricking car! As a college kid with no car, I had three options for future road trips: a) try to be a little more relaxed and set my expectations appropriately; b) try to find a Type A to drive me next time; or c) get my own car, and tell the Type B I’m leaving at such-and-such time, with or without him. (If I actually held to this and left him behind, he wouldn’t hold a grudge, because hey, he’s Type B!)

Handy reference chart

I truly believe that the key to not getting overly disgruntled about flakage is to set your expectations appropriately. For decades I labored under the misconception that most people out there were just like me—that is, when they made a commitment they kept it. As you can see from this post, I’ve gotten past that delusion. (In fact, I’ve come to realize that I myself am not as immune to committing flakage as I like to think.) Over the last few years, I’ve put together, in my head, a flakage reference chart that I use whenever I’m making plans with somebody. Here is that chart, presented in print for the very first time:

Blue indicates advance flakage. You can see how rampant it is!

Of course, this chart is really only a jumping-off point. The real value of the chart involves assigning each of your friends to an overall flakage profile, which can shift the entries in the right column up or down. For example, a Type B friend with a lousy track record might get the right column shifted up, so his custom chart would look like this:

On the other hand, if your friend has a perfect or near-perfect track record, he might merit this rare and elusive chart version:

The only thing that never changes is that last row. There will always be those who like to keep their options open.

Did I miss anything? Do you have further insight to contribute? Post a comment below, or e-mail me at feedback@albertnet.us. I’ll be sure to respond. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ll get to it. I’ll try.

dana albert blog

Fiction - Rejection Affects Health

NOTE: This post, though referencing an actual psychology study, is a work of fiction. I use the actual study as a jumping-off point for something entirely fanciful.

Preamble

“Rejection triggers responses in the body that can increase a person’s risk for maladies such as asthma, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and depression, a new study says. Scientists at UCLA recruited 124 healthy young adults to participate in a lab-based test aimed at determining whether social stress such as rejection causes inflammation, which can have detrimental effects on mental and physical health. Participants were put through stressful tests that were designed to make them feel rejected. Measurements of inflammatory markers were performed on samples of oral fluids taken before and after the tests…. Not surprisingly, the inflammatory biological markers in oral fluids increased dramatically after the stressful tests.”

—“Rejection Affects Health,” WebMD Health Newsletter, 10 Aug 2010

Introduction

Our recent study was a big success. One of the conclusions we arrived at is that further study is warranted, with a widened scope. In our initial study we had recruited healthy young adults; what more light could be shed, we wondered, if we studied all ages?

Our first follow-up study was with seniors. The results are not documented because the sessions did not go smoothly. Several of the participants could not hear—and others could not understand—most of what our test administrators were saying. Moreover, several of the male participants had poorly shaved chins, with little white hairs like Shredded Wheat stuck to their skin, and other subjects drooled, which distracted the administrators.

Much better success was found with other age categories, and those results are documented here.

Test #1 — Six-year-old test subject

Several six-year-old study administrators were recruited and trained in how to make the study subject feel rejected. These administrators very quickly caught on to the study methodology and did an excellent job carrying out the test.

On a school playground, a test subject was selected: an especially cute six-year-old girl who we felt would be unaccustomed to rejection. She was not made aware that she was participating in a test. The administrators, who were also her classmates, set about teasing her mercilessly. The first said, “I’m not friends with you anymore!” The second joined in, “Yeah, you’re like a baby, always carrying your ‘Roo Bear’ around!” The third administrator yelled, “We hate Roo Bear—he smells like dog farts!” Then they all laughed.

The impact on the subject was immediate. Subject bawled loudly for some time. We had trouble getting a good oral fluid sample with our swab, as subject thrashed around and her saliva was diluted by nasal mucous, which was flowing freely from both nostrils, and by tears streaming down into her mouth. Subject would not stop yelling. It took us a long time to figure out what she was trying to say: “It’s not ‘Roo Bear,’ it’s ‘Woo Bear,’ and she’s a girl bear!”

Not surprisingly, and despite the trouble with the oral fluid sample, this social trauma resulted in significant increases in markers of inflammatory activity, with abnormally high levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (sTNFαRII) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). We recommend further testing with this age group, though it has become obvious that it would be wise, going forward, to notify the subject’s parents in advance.

Test #2 — Fifteen-year-old test subject

Subject was a fifteen-year-old bike racer. Administrator was a fellow racer, who was given specific instructions in carrying out the test. Following a difficult hill climb bike race, a group of racers was comparing results and talking about the race. Subject, who did not finish in the top twenty, looked ideally awkward from the outset. Administrator said to the group at large, “Hey, I don’t need this energy bar … does anybody want it?” Others had been instructed to say nothing, and eventually subject replied, “Yeaahh!” Administrator stared at him in disgust and did not hand him the energy bar, behaving as though subject were uniquely exempt from the energy bar offer due to some obvious defect.

While this test initially looked promising, the professor made us feel like idiots by refusing to analyze the oral fluid sample. Apparently the test setup was rendered invalid by the elevated inflammation markers that would inevitably accompany athletic challenges like bike races, and we should have known this. We have thought about trying again with this age group but are feeling a bit demoralized.

Test #3 — Twenty-year-old test subject

A pretty brunette college student was recruited as administrator and instructed to be conspicuously friendly toward a prospective subject in her foreign language class. After some delay, subject eventually asked her out on a date. From the outset of the date (a casual lunch at a café), per our instructions, administrator was oddly cold, refusing to smile or engage subject in conversation. Eventually subject asked her to explain herself, to which she responded, “I talked to my old high-school boyfriend for a long time on the phone last night—he’s at BYU—and we’ve decided to get back together.”

To our great surprise, the oral fluid sample showed no significant increase in either sTNFαRII or IL-6. We interviewed the subject later; here is the most salient excerpt from his statement:

“She was straight-up fly, so I made sure not to get my hopes up. Sure, I was disappointed, but mostly I was trying not to laugh. I was tempted to say, ‘BYU? In Utah? The epicenter of American polygamy?’ or, ‘Seriously, your high school beau? There’s food in your dorm fridge that’ll last longer than your “relationship”! With four years of young women being dangled in front of him, you really think he’s going to wait for you? ’ But I didn’t say anything.

“Anyhow, it’s no biggie. My roommate and I like to compare notes about girls rejecting us. It’s like a running joke. We even have an expression for it—‘me dio calabazas’, which means ‘she gave me pumpkins.’ We love recalling these rejections … it’s almost like keeping a scrapbook.”

Test #4 — Forty-something test subject

It occurred to us that our study should include subjects having the classic risk factors of mid-life crisis. Those in their forties, burdened with mortgages and living in fear of losing their corporate jobs, were deemed ideal. We selected our subject on the basis of his age (forty-one), life commitments (family, Bay Area mortgage), and the fact of his maintaining a non-commercial blog (apparently as a hobby). We recruited a woman of the same age to serve as the administrator, accosting subject at a barbecue. Administrator’s friend began the dialog by asking subject’s wife if she blogged; she took the bait, replying, “No, but my husband does.” Administrator promptly asked subject, acidly, with evident bewilderment and even revulsion, “Why do you blog?”

Subject was speechless for at least ten seconds, before stammering, “It’s because I’m stupid and I don’t have any friends, why do you think?” We immediately swabbed him and found unprecedented high levels of both sTNFαRII and IL-6. A quick scan of our records showed this was in fact the strongest data set of rejection-inflicted inflammation on record. Subject agreed to a brief discussion about his experience. Why, we asked him, was his reaction so strong?

“Well, first of all,” he replied, “she asked the question with such disgust, as if she were asking, ‘Why would you sniff a cat’s butt?’ I mean, ‘Why blog?’ Why do anything? Why do a crossword puzzle? Why knit? It’s like she couldn’t imagine that a person would write just to express himself, maybe improve his writing, and post his stuff to a blog in case somebody might want to read it. Her question seemed like either a rejection of the idea that I could ever offer anything of value to the literary world, or a rejection of the very existence of literary world, like the world has forgotten that there are modes of written expression that go deeper than Twitter or Facebook.”

We asked if that was all. (Subject became even more agitated and we even considered re-swabbing him.) “Isn’t that enough?” he said. Finally, after some reflection, he said, “I guess I’ll admit that, since nobody questioned the idea of my wife blogging, this woman’s incredulity was like a rejection of my masculinity. Like, why would a guy blog, you know?”

Further study is clearly warranted.

Test #5 — Forty-something test subject #2

Based on the success of the last administrator/subject pairing, we again selected a forty-something woman as the administrator and a forty-something white collar husband/father amateur blogger as the subject. This time, the venue was a high school reunion, which we felt would be a perfect setting. (We deny the assertion that this test was an attempt at getting the “high score on inflammatory activity markers”; we are simply trying to isolate acute cases for further study.) Administrator was a friend of the subject’s wife. Subject, again, was unaware that a test was being performed on him.

Administrator, behaving in a friendly manner, casually asked subject if he was on Facebook. He said he was not. She asked if he Tweeted. Again, he replied no. She asked if he did anything social online at all, and he said he had a blog. “A blog?” she said, with unmasked repugnance. “Why do you blog?”

Subject, to our surprise, was placid, even sanguine. “You mean you really don’t know why bloggers blog?” he replied. “I thought everybody knew that. It’s so that they can make fun of people to a wide audience. For example, by tomorrow everybody on the Internet will know that you went around this reunion with your bleach-blonde hair and boob job thinking you were all hot, when really you looked ridiculous because your teeth were stained purple by red wine.”

Thinking quickly, we swabbed the administrator and found sTNFαRII and IL-6 levels that were completely off the charts. Clearly, further study is warranted.

dana albert blog