How Silliness Saved Murray: Cock-a-Doodle-Do!

Introducing Murray, the Sweetest Man I’ve Ever Known

My husband Murray's parents came from Poland. They were Jewish and barely escaped being killed by the Nazis.

Murray is an Occupational Therapist who speaks "kid" as a first language. He is magic with children, finding ways past their problem behaviors, so they may more fully enjoy their lives.

When Murray worked on the Psychiatric Ward in our local hospital, he was used as an assessment tool. If one of the patients couldn't get along with Murray, the Assessment Team figured the patient probably needed their medicine adjusted.

The Big Lie Turns into the Big Fear

I tell you this because it will help you understand what a waste of joy it is for Murray to suffer from obsessive fears, as he does every day. He has coped with his fears by taking martial arts for over thirty years. He has guns and knows how to shoot them. (They are safely locked up; I assure you.) He keeps a bat under our bed and I think he even had a knife handy for many years we were together, without telling me about it.

Murray grew up in Los Angeles and suffered violence close up and personal.  That was one reason he moved to the Northwest in 1992.  But now he lives in one of the safest places in the country, Corvallis, Oregon. Neither of us has ever been physically threatened, much less injured here . We've had some vandalism and minor theft, but nothing violent. No one has ever tried to break into our home or the home of anyone we know.

Still, he is plagued by these fears. Though I have known about his fears for the fourteen years we have been together, it is only recently he let me inside enough to see how much of every day my sweet Murray spends protecting himself and me from being dragged away and slaughtered.

He knows his fears are understandable but not rationale. Still they dominate his thinking and steal much of his joy. Then I listened to The Brain That Changes Itself  by Norman Doidge.

A Silly, Effective Solution

From this book I learned that our brains are plastic and whatever we practice grows. Practicing being afraid is like sledding down a hill on the same path: the more you do it, the deeper the trench gets and the harder it is to take any other path.

In order for Murray to build a new Path of Joy and Gratitude in his brain, he needed to get out of the content of his fears. Arguing with himself about how he needed to stop thinking about death threats is like trying to talk a stalker out of hounding you. All your conversation with a stalker gets turned into: "She cares! She really cares!”

All conversation with your worries, anxieties and doomsday scenarios just gives them more mass to crush you.

Sing a Silly Song of Sixpence

When Murray gets a fear thought now, he starts singing aloud.. The song keeps adapting, (He is singing Itsy, BitsySpider like Mick Jagger as I type this,) but it started out like this: “Row , row, row your boat gently down the stream, Mary had a little lamb, Cock- a- Doodle- Do!”

His singing serves at least two purposes:
1. He is letting me know that at that moment, just when he is watching television with me an rubbing my feet, his Fear is attempting to kidnap him. Instead, he sings silly songs, so he can come home to himself and me.

2. He is taking energy and strength away from his fears and putting them into joy and gratitude. He is rewiring his brain and his life.

Result: increased intimacy and joy.

Your Silly Shift

If you are wanting to stop doing something destructive and replace your pain with joy, try doing something really silly when you are tempted to fall into a Bad Habit Trench. Instead of getting mad at your little sister, for example, go blow bubbles. Stay out of the content of how annoying she is. You know where that trail leads. You’ve gone down it enough times before.

If you are afraid we are headed for total economic collapse, the end of civilization as we know it,  do a little jig every time this thought enters your head. This behavior will be good for you and the world.

Can you imagine if you were walking down the street and people passed you singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star like Kermit the Frog, or did little bouncy steps as they smiled at you? We would all be reminded to practice falling in love with our lives one habit at a time.

By the way, a fearful brain cannot find creative solutions. A fearful brain condemns us to a future of self-fulfilling icky encounters.

So say yes to Silly Singing!