Performance Anxiety. : Working with a sport psychologist to work through my anxieyt.

Remember, when we are upset, with anxiety or stressed, it does affect our dogs. Some show it outwardly more than others. We get wrapped up in our succeeding, wrapped up in our desires and trying to impress for our egos, but instead we defeat ourselves and stress our dogs. Several people are unaware how much they stress their dogs when it comes to performance. Even if you are a positive trainer, your anguish, disappointment and stress is very punishing to a dog that is very in-tuned to you. I lived this and know this. Throughout the years I put a lot of stress on my dogs. In the later years I have gotten better, and finally fine tuning myself so any time I get to play with my dog is a joyous and fun bond building event. We are human and our dogs are canine.
        The setting, a canine nose work trial. 

         It is my turn to go up to the starting line. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I scan the around the element to collect my thoughts how I will work the area. The moment is still. Eyes all on me and my dog waiting for our first move. I cue my dog to "Search" and off he darts. I follow my dog as he leads the way. I let him work since he can smell the odor and I do not know where it is located. As he works, if I feel he is stuck, this is where my performance anxiety kicks in. If my dog didn't find the odor within the first 30-50 seconds, then I know this will be a bit of a challenge.Tthat challenge is what sends my brain into freeze mode. As my anxiety increases, my sensitive dog worries and starts fringing. Fringing is when the dog is indicating on odor, but is not at the odor source. Nose Work dogs are taught to go to source. There are many reasons why a dog will fringe, one of the times my dog Mickey fringes is when I'm frozen, my brain is not working and I'm lost what to do. When my dog alerts at the wrong place for odor, it increases my stress and performance anxiety. This in turns stresses my dog and we get into these fringing cycles. The tension and stress in me is also amplified when people are watching me, and just on the tip of trying to tell me what I did wrong. You see them slightly leaning forward with their eyes a little bit wider. When you have anxiety, criticism is difficult to process. You are in a heightened state and learning is very little. I shut down.

      To make matters worse, I have a vision impairment. Completely blind with no light perception in the right eye, while the left eye I see only 20/70 with an excess amount of floaters that can get in the way of my field of vision at the wrong time. I also have a constant white film in my view. My retina has been overly stretched to cover a large eye ball that distorts what I see, thus clarity is lost. I also periodically get flashes of light. When I change light, like coming from outside and going in or vise versa, it takes about 5 or more minutes for my eye to adjust and I get grey or white outs. My ability to see contrast is low and many times I do not see objects because of this. I have only about 35% of my vision to work.

     With my vision limitation, I could miss that ever so subtle indication my dog found source if he's in a fringing mode. However, when my Mickey is not fringing, his alerts are clear. That is when I can look like a great handler. But spectators when they know where the odor is, they are able to know if the dog is alerting much more than the handler when they know their dog fringes. People judge. This is a huge stress while others see it and I can't. Their advise usually doesn't help because they do not understand my limitations. My situation needs to be approached in a little bit different way. One way of teaching something is not a one size fits all.

     Every person has their particular "fear" thing that causes their performance to be altered. They were able to perform well in their backyard, in their own studio or some other familiar place. Some people have an intense fear talking in front of an audience, dancing at parties, singing in front of friends, or even competitions. 

     While I am zoning out with anxiety, my brain is flooded with chemicals of my body which changes my thinking process. My vision and hearing perception changes; It won't be the same as in practice.  But on the flip side sometimes the brain in flight or fight mode can work for you. If I am not completely zonedout and I can focus, the nerves help me perform better. That's the balance I seek. Use my nervousness to succeed and not let the nervousness turn into anxiety.   

      The challenge I have seen with Nose Work is, you have to think on your feet in helping your dog, when they haven't found the odors. What area have I covered? Where did my dog alert to odor? Let the dog lead the way, but when a dog is missing the hide, you do need to step in. Stepping in takes a quick thinking process of assessing many factors and trying it out with your dog to see if that helps them locate the hide. This will be places like pockets where odor hangs or where odor pushes to a corner, and the dog can't source where the source is located. The dog's behavior usually gives the indication. However, when you have performance anxiety, trying to think through a process can be hard. It is unlike a rehearsed routine where you build motion memory. I have been in situations I had stage fright, but having practice the routine over 100 times, my body subconsciously knew what to do next. After a few thousand various searches in different environments, I hope to get close to my body subconsciously knowing what to do next.

       As I have moved up in Nose Work, I noticed that my anxiety of people watching me was getting worse. I thought as I moved up in the ranks, I wouldn't have this  anxiety. This is different from being nervous. Nervous is something where you are excited, but able to perform. Being nervous says you still care. But, my performance anxiety was different. It was crippling and getting worse as I moved up the ranks. Nose Work was starting not to be fun and I was stressing my dog.

      I remember from the late 80's how I would shut down when I did sheep herding. When my dog would get too excitable around the sheep, my instructor would take over so my dog wouldn't get in the habit of dive bombing the sheep. But what she was doing is taking over and not teaching me how to teach my dog not to dive bomb. When I was in my very first sheep herding trial, I froze, and the sheep ran right past me with my dog driving behind. I was so use to my instructor taking over, that under stress, I just did the same behaviors as when I was in practice, freeze and let the instructor take over. But, this doesn't work in a trial. 

      Having grown up a disabled child, I was so use to people taking over what I did. They didn't have patience to walk me through the situation, they just took over. This happens often with disabled children who are not fast enough, don't see something or hear something to take the quick action that an average person does. It kind of takes out the confidence of the person.

      What this has done is when someone watches me, I freeze because I think they are going to take over, or make a judgement. People are so quick to tell someone what they are doing wrong, that they don't see where the person is coming from first. They want to tell, not coach or mentor. With so many situations of tell, it created a life long pattern of freezing when ever I did something when people watched me. Even with computers, because it takes me a few seconds longer to find something on the computer screen, I'm constantly having people point it out to me where it is, rather than them allowing me just a few more seconds to do it on my own. 

     On top of that, just like everyone, we have an ego. We want to do and succeed well. We all want to be regarded as a great handler and people look up to us. This is imbedded in who we are as a person. If we have enough successes in our lives, we have built the confidence, but when you have people demeaning or making judgements on you, like those who have a disability because you don't function as fast, or take a little longer, it takes a toll. You need to really dig down and focus on what you want a lot more.

     I have dabbled in dog sports for 25 years. I never had been able to stick to a dog competition until  Nose Work. I'm working through my anxiety issues which are allowing me to move forward. Sometimes getting older doesn't solve a problem, but working through it does.

     In the book "The Science and psychology of Music Performance: Creative Strategies for Teaching and Learning" edited by Richard Parncutt and Gary McPherson, I find comfort that I am not alone. Even though the book is for musicians, I see the same patterns for an athlete. I guess performing in dog sports would put me as an athlete? What ever, I see the same issues. Paraphrasing the book, it talks about the flight or fight response, but in a performance, we can't run away or punch out the judge! We need skills of cognitive therapy to help our mind set.

     Public humiliation is a big fear of people and even the most skilled persons can choke up. The book talks about the fear of negative evaluations by others. Perfectionism, having too high expectations can be a big interference in performance and an over concern about small mistakes and flaws. Too much focus on what is wrong, than what is going well. Performance anxiety is also closely related to other social phobias and characteristic traits of certain personalities. Perfectionists tend to be very self-critical and as a consequence, suffer from low self-esteem. We can't forget self personal control, which can also really cause issues in performance. High personal and social standard together with low personal control showed in a study by Mor, Day Flett (1995) to be debilitating.

      High unrealistic expectations tied to a social aspect was more debilitating than high expectation from self. So this means we really are affected by how others perceive us and what they expect from us. This explains why I tend to focus too much on what others think. 

       An interesting research article, "Effects of a Motivational Climate Intervention for Coaches on Young Athletes’ Sport Performance Anxiety" by Ronald E. Smith, Frank L. Smoll, and Sean P. Cumming from University of Washington, that explains very similar concepts on performance anxiety as the last article. It states:

          "Children who are high in sport performance anxiety appear to be especially
sensitive to fears of failure and resulting negative social- and self-evaluation. Passer
(1983) found that high anxiety children worried more frequently about making
mistakes, not playing well, and losing than did their low-anxiety counterparts.
They also were more concerned than low anxiety children about how they would
be evaluated by their coaches, peers, and parents, and they had stronger expectancies
that failure would elicit criticism from these significant others. Other studies
have yielded similar findings (Gould, Horn, & Spreeman, 1983; Rainey, Conklin,
& Rainey, 1987; Smith et al., 2002)."

              Focus on mistakes and worrying about failure was also talked about in the other resources on this topic. Further, these children are worried about criticism and how peers, coaches and parents would perceive them. Interesting pattern.

                The research article further states that coaches of today focus on not doing well in a particular situation or not winning is feedback. Goals, attitudes and values are extremely important in how a child perceives a game and their performance. Extensive evaluated feedback about their ability reminds me so much of my positive reinforcement training with animals. You see where your child is, you see the final behavior, and set a plan unique to the individual player. Shape them to become better. This article does talk about focus is on improvement and supporting team mates. Support is important in the young ages. I often wonder, were the criticism of kids is what still plays in my head today? I remember so clearly in middle school when playing soft ball, the boys who were smirking at me ran right up to me when I was going to hit a ball. They figured I couldn't hit it well because I was a "retard" who couldn't do it. I did hit the ball over their heads and did see the shocked look on their faces. But this was the attitude I got from many kids when I was younger. They all thought I was a "retard." 

     Perhaps since kids ridiculed me, teased me and acted towards me I couldn't really do anything, it stuck with me all these years. Even some adults see me as different and patronize me as if I could never succeed as them. I could never rise to "their" level. I got a lot of this in my life. And now I'm working on a plan to change this thinking.

     I had a few sessions with a sport psychologist. What a world of difference it made in my performance. I learned to focus what I need and not to clutter my brain with other thoughts that are not productive at that moment. We worked out a plan what to focus on in a trial, step-by-step. When this happens, what are you going to do? I also have a methodical approach now when I come up to the start line. It is all about focos. 
     
     Another reason why focus training is so crucial to me is having stage 4 kidney disease, the toxins my kidneys cannot filter out, affect my concentration. It is very difficult to keep focus on thought. The sport psychologist had also helped me to keep focus in other areas of my life which my kidney disease was causing problems.

      We have to remember that dogs are sensitive and when we get upset we messed up, they feel this and become stressed. Mickey now fringes less because I am more focused. I reduced my expectations to task, rather than ego dream. For example, focus on how my dog is searching and help them and not think about getting a great score. That comes later and is useless information during your run. Your brain over loads when you think of too many things, so only think of tasks to do well and nothing else. 

Bullies: how to really handle them

Two years ago I went into a Master's program for Conflict resolution and peace building. Because of my kidney disease I had to stop the program. I just couldn't keep up with all the demands of the program and continue to work full-time and keep up with life.

The reason why I wanted to major in conflict resolution was all my life I've had to deal with bullies, from kids in school to co-workers to management. Before this master's program, I read what I could. It seems the more I read, the more I would come up empty. I wanted a solution. People would give solutions, but they were incredibly weak solutions. I found some good definitions. I could pin point what was happening and I was validated. I thought going in the program would give me answers. I came up empty.

Those who are disabled tend to get bullied more. It is the perception of them being "weaker" than their bully. Bully things they are an easy target. Some have been able to assess their bullies and world well enough to learn how to handle it. Survival.

In my real life, when ever I would use a solution I've read to resolve bullying, it failed. Most of their solutions were to tell a teacher or tell a supervisor. Then they could take care of the issue. But what I found out, that you are giving your power to someone else. The lack of power around a bully, now was shifted to giving the power to a superior. Like they are now going to protect me. But that still doesn't solve the problem. It made my life worse.

I realized that bullying is a form of politics. Kids learn how their bullying works in school. That's where they develop their skills. Then when they go out in the real world, they continue their bully tactics because they work.  Some adults are former targets of bullies and learned they have to get into a game or be squashed. How one plays the game determines if it turns dirty or not. 

I have been someone who didn't get politics, and didn't get the game. The more I didn't get it, the more I suffered. It does pay to pay attention and learn about the social structure of people. Learn psychology as you will. it is a powerful tool. I hate games, I really do, but when you are desperate to survive and desparate to get the bully off your back,  Learning politics and playing the game is the only relief you will get.

Bullies pick targets because they can. This isn't to say that the person who is the target of the bully deserves what they get. No they don't!!! But, the target needs to learn how not to be a target. Displays of confident behavior goes a long way. Bullies pick on what they perceive as weak to practice their skill. They get a high on it as they think they rise above. It is dirty and mean, but regardless how wrong they are for doing their bully behavior, we have to learn how to deal with people like this.

Many targets want to be left alone, but the more they show a weakness, the more the bully preys. Now note I say "show" a weakness.  Showing a weakness isn't necessarily mean the person is weak. Learning and observing animals, you learn that life is about displays. Even if you think it is phoney, think of it more as a role you must play to survive. You can always stay you, but if you don't want to continue to be bullied, you need to change your display. Bullies will never go away. You may be in a school program that has a strong anti-bullying program. That's great, but out in the real world, you are not always going to have a teacher or someone to keep tabs on those bullies. In reality, many times you are left to deal with them yourselves.

In the workplace, they can harbor some of the worst bullies. What's even worse, sometimes your management has the worst bullies. When you go to them for help, you just opened yourself for the bully management to practice their power trip on you. Their actions are very deceptive. When you ask a supervisor for help, when they are a bully, this becomes a game how they play you and how they play the people who are bullying you. Then your bullying problem has gotten bigger. You now have the co-workers who are bullying you, and now you have a supervisor who is bullying you.

But to be fair, sometimes the management is not a bully and they just don't know how to solve the situation, and in turn make it worse. This again is why the target really must take care of their own bully issues.

There is no one answer. Each situation is unique. People are also a varying factor that finding an answer sometimes takes time. But, trying to get along with people is really politics if you like it or not. We grow up living in the fantasy that people will like us for who we are and you want to be an honest person with integrity. The problem is, sometimes this fantasy is shattered when you are dealing with bullies. Of course we don't want them to have the upper hand, but they have been practicing this behavior since way back. They are more savvy than you and will beat you at this game. They don't have integrity, they are self driven with their power.

the good news, there are many solutions out there. You can keep your integrity. I first recommend to never tell your management, unless there is something illegal happening. Something illegal can be sexual harassment, physical abuse, and other things. The most important thing about something illegal is document well. IN some situations, bullying can get to the point that it changes to something illegal. Document well is extremely important. Tedious, but important. Do not put interpretations in your documentation, only facts. Stick to facts.

Now I realize I am just as bad as those books that do not give a solution. But it is a dance, you need to learn t he music and the steps. Change your behavior and see how that affects people. Learn how to use a display. Remember a display isn't who you are, it is what you show to survive.

I recommend people read books on behavior and how to work with people. Those books help you more than books on bullying. Books on bullying keep you trapped as a victim. Changing yourself isn't about pleasing the bully, but making it so you are less of a target. Learning how to play a game to survive.

Essentially, it is learning how to play the bully. Turn the tables. Study their game, find their weakness. Then use it to survive. yes, we are taught to be good people, but the bully is causing great distress to you. But possibilities of how to handle something is endless. it isn't easy to think up what to do, but start with changing yourself. Learning about the bully and know how to reach them. You don't have to like each other to get along, and that is the goal, to make peace where the bully isn't bothering you. Fantasy is when we hold hands and sing Kumbaya and all get along. Although we want this to happen and it could, don't expect this to be an outcome.

Also, be careful what you show to people. We all hide something about ourselves, so saying "that isn't me" is bogus, because in reality, we never completely show all ourselves. Be careful in being too nice. Yes, be careful in being too nice. Being nice to a bully is just a huge neon sign to a bully they can take advantage of you and use your niceness against you. Yes being nice makes US feel good, but done in the wrong place can make your life miserable. Just know where to be nice.

Learn as much as you can about social status, then can give you an edge. Not to get ahead of the bullies per se, but to assess the environment so you can control it the way you want. We do have that power more than we realize.

Although my examples are broad, I hope they give you a little insight of the world of bullies. it is just my own personal experience being slammed hard by bullies. I've learned to get in with the game and be careful. Sometimes ridding of bullies means getting a new job or career. 

Finding Joy When Everything is Falling Apart

       As I have described in details my challenges being in-between deaf-blind in this blog, a new added dimension of challenge has been added. Although I have had kidney disease for 32 years, I was at a low toxic level that the affects were minimal. I couldn't become a professional athlete, but I was still highly functional that it didn't slow me down. About two years ago, my kidney function took a nose dive to a scary level. I just hover above being put on a transplant list. The zone where you are not bad enough, but your health is affected greatly. I am fatigued and in a fog most of the time, I had thought if I just ate better, took more iron pills or rested more, it would go away. Not quite that easy. I had to find something to keep me going, a focus that could make the challenges be in the background. Ironically, it was something that was with me all along. They had more to give to fulfill my life.

       Kidney disease is complex. Your life changes drastically and even when you finally understand this, the daily management of your life needs to be micromanaged to the day, the hour, or to the minute. Life is managed to every single item in my day. I need to carefully watch what I eat. If I decide to deviate from that, with the mindset of "oh this one time won't hurt," I pay for it dearly. I have to watch my activity level. If I use a muscle, joint or even a bone too much, I'm in pain for a few days. Pain, nausea and fatigue are nearly daily. I live in a fog that I have to use a lot of mental power to overcome. My clear thinking fades in and out. Any mental energy left over is used to overcome my barriers in my vision or hearing. Creatinine, one of the toxins that builds up in your body with kidney disease, causes memory lapse and focus problems. Every day, frequently at work, I have to redirect myself to get back on task. It is micromanaging myself. This never was an issue before since I had a talent to focus before. Concentration is difficult. I get burned out daily trying to over come these additional obstacles from kidney disease. I keep going. Where I find the drive? I have no idea, because my performance at work isn't that pizazz I once had. I have always thrived to be an over achiever. Today those efforts are not apparent to people. I'm putting out more energy now, but my results are not what they once were. This is hard, very hard on the psyche. Life and social acceptance is about performance and how well you socialize in the politics. I just don't have that ability anymore. That's hard to swallow when you were so use to impressing before, as I no longer stand out. It is crucial that I find my own joy, find my own world and I have found it, it has been with me all along.

       When you solve one issue, one comes right after quickly that you don't have time to rest or put it aside, you must deal with it now. This means you prioritize your life. This also means you will irritate others around you. When you had the energy and focus before to fix things or smooth things over, it now has to be tossed aside. Your focus now is survival. No longer can you have social graces anymore.You have to watch your energy meter.

       Cover up becomes a default behavior. This is social survival. You can't let people know how bad off you are or they start patronizing you, judging you or demeaning you. They see you look fine, and think you are trying to milk it, or gain more attention. The attention I want is to feel normal. I'm trying hard to regain what I had and it is falling apart. I learned how to cover up, unknowingly as a disabled child to fit in to the world. People expect you to act or perform a certain way, and when you don't, you are labeled socially inept, or someone that isn't apart of the "in group". Even though we think if "in group" as in middle school or high school, I find adults still follow these social patterns of their rules of accepting or rejecting you. Adults can be brutal. So with this adversity, I must seek joy. I need to create my own life and my own haven.

      It sucks I can't hold myself together. I have a full-time job, that for someone with my disabilities is really challenging. I need every impulse of energy to focus on trying to be productive. I come home exhausted. This exhaustion is met with despair as my house has so much clutter, I become overwhelmed. I can't keep up with regular maintenance of my house. I remember how in college, what a neat freak I was and kept everything in order. Now I can't.

        Doing nothing isn't apart of my nature, but when you are this spent, it starts to become apart of your life. This vicious cycle of feeling horribly guilty for not doing, not cleaning a house that is so overwhelmingly messed up, and the need to sit and rest. I now have to accept doing nothing as apart of my life now. Getting over this reality took a long time. Admitting this enables me to manage myself better. So many times I would get up to clean, to only have fatigue set in and I wanted to sit down. Sit down in a house so messy I dissociated from my life.

      My life right now has changed drastically that I have to carefully plan enjoyment in my life. Most enjoyment has been sucked out of my life. I'm burned out of life because I need to put even more effort in extracting joy in my life. With the combination of vision and hearing loss along with Kidney disease, I now feel like a handicapped person. I've had to learn the meaning "work smarter, not harder" to feel life is worth living. It is sad that my life now is about "is it worth living"? Oh no worries, I'm not thinking of suicide and far from it. I just have to work harder in finding joy than ever before. Joy was easy to find before, now I have a mange myself appropriately and plan carefully for joy in my life.

      Some days I'm not with joy. Finding and managing joy is exhausting work. I give myself a rest. During these times I noticed people tend to be a bit distance or judgmental of me. I have no energy to  tend to them to smooth things over. I'm spent and because I'm human, I'm cranky and my tolerance level is low. This means I have a very small pool of friends. Before, I could over come barriers, I could find that extra umph to connect to others. I had the energy to please other people. I don't have the energy to please other people anymore. Sadly, if I am to connect to others, they need to come reach out me. Which very few people are willing to do. They think I'm "normal" and how dare I expect them to do the work, but they have no idea how spent I am.

       My social life is predominately on-line. Some would say that is sad, but when you fight fatigue, it is a blessing to have it. Sadly, my writing suffers more and more each day. I also notice that I'm becoming more of a social outcast. When I think I'm writing a certain way, people are taking it another way. Editing is exhausting for me now. It is a state of exasperation of I don't have the energy to read or write well, but I want to socialize. No one understands, they just make judgements. Then I'm in isolation again.

        I keep trying to find light. Something to keep me going, something to look forward to in life. I have had dogs for 27 years, and they have been a big part of my life. I never realized they could give me more  joy I had been seeking. While everything around me was falling apart, they were there to give more. My activities with them in nose work, is so meaningful. I tried competition obedience, but it left me frustrated. Mostly the precision and perfectionism got to me. I needed a sport to enable me to measure my progress. A dog sport that I like and my dogs love. I found Nose Work. A civilian sport that simulates drug or bomb detection dogs. The dogs search for an essential oil of either Birch, Anise or Clove. Each competition level has a level of hides and problems for the dogs to sort out.

         Doing Nose Work makes me feel I can do something when the rest of my life feels like it is falling apart. I post often about my Nose Work activities on Facebook because it is the one thing that makes me feel I'm not completely handicapped. It gets me out the door and moving my body with purpose. It enables me to feel I still have a life and something to live for while I struggle with kidney disease. This focus enables me to over come travel, over come my vision, over come my hearing, and over come fatigue. My vision does interfere with how I work with my dogs in Nose Work, but I truly believe there are ways around this, I just have to find that right magic. I know it is there and I will feel that i have tapped into something marvelous. My dogs are my life. They enable me to feel the joy that has been robbed from me. Being successful with them enables me to feel less handicapped. It makes fighting kidney disease easier, that life has meaning again. There is hope and i found my life.