Today I sing a song that I have never sung before and have only heard a few times in my life, ‘Just Pretend’. The song was composed by Guy Fletcher in partnership with his writing partner Doug Flett. It was recorded by Elvis Presley on June 6th, 1970 in Nashville, Tennessee. The song was released on Presley's album ‘That’s the Way It Is’ that appeared on November 11, 1970.
Robert Matthew-Walker, a critic and writer was uninspired by Presley’s performance of this song and in his 1995 book ‘Heartbreak Hotel: The Life and Music of Elvis Presley’, he wrote so. Although I am not too familiar with the song, I love the words of it.
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There are many times in life that we just cannot face the truth or perhaps find it uncomfortable or too hurtful to do so. Often, in such circumstances, ‘We just pretend’ that things were otherwise.
For over twenty years I ran literally hundreds of groups with numbers between 12 and 30 usually; teaching group members how to relax, reduce their tension levels, increase their social skills functioning and decrease unhealthy fear and anger levels. These courses were two hours in duration and took place weekly over twenty-four weeks. Their success levels in reducing criminal behaviour and improving appropriate behaviour patterns were second to none in the country and were reported upon and discussed in national and international literature for the benefit of health and social workers.
The upshot of my six-month courses, fifteen years of research and a ten-year follow up study on 166 group members showed conclusively that at the heart of all problem behaviour and emotional disturbance lies ‘either too high or too low a level of fear or anger in Aggressive and Non-Assertive types, along with too many responses marred by too much mental anxiety and muscle tension’. These problematic behavioural symptoms indicated a course combining relaxation training with fear reduction and anger management and buttressed by improved social skills learning and practice.
Surprisingly, I discovered through my long term studies (leaving aside for the moment traumatic events such as molestation, death, torture, loss etc) that learning appropriate social skills to be essential in the overall improvement of all the problematic areas previously mentioned. I was initially surprised to learn that the accumulative effect of smaller social skill deficits produced greater tension more often than one’s inability to negotiate the larger and more difficult social tasks required of us from time to time. Thus, learning to appropriately accept and refuse requests, give and receive compliments, make requests without explanation and honestly replying to a loved one who has bought you a present you hate when they unexpectedly ask you ‘Did you like your present?’ creates more tension in our bodies than physically fending off an attacker who is out to push you to the ground or who is spreading untruths around the neighbourhood about you to ruin your good reputation! I found that it is the absence of these smaller social skills that are more likely to contribute to your higher tension and stress levels.
The most prominent feature of my research revealed that all the above response pattern types are classical ‘avoiders’ of potentially embarrassing social interaction and that they usually ‘wing their way’ through their embarrassment by refusing to confront the situation truthfully. In short, they simply ‘Just Pretend’.
Who knows? The day may come when someone you like but don’t love romantically may ask you to marry them. Will you be able to answer them truthfully and let them down more gently than providing them with the more usual crash-landing experience? It will be then when you find that what you learned on your social skills course many years earlier are transferable to many situations that contain similar aspects to them. You could even discover that being on that social skills course three years earlier, and learning how to refuse the request of your foreman to work overtime, actually prepared your appropriate response on the more serious occasion of refusing another’s an offer of marriage appropriately.
There is so much in life that comes on us unexpectedly, and before we have time to think what precisely is happening or is being asked of us, our usual response pattern has automatically come into play. There are so many situations in life that we face that we don’t know precisely what to say or do for the best, so we just try to wing it by ‘Just Pretending’.
Love and peace Bill xxx
Robert Matthew-Walker, a critic and writer was uninspired by Presley’s performance of this song and in his 1995 book ‘Heartbreak Hotel: The Life and Music of Elvis Presley’, he wrote so. Although I am not too familiar with the song, I love the words of it.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
There are many times in life that we just cannot face the truth or perhaps find it uncomfortable or too hurtful to do so. Often, in such circumstances, ‘We just pretend’ that things were otherwise.
For over twenty years I ran literally hundreds of groups with numbers between 12 and 30 usually; teaching group members how to relax, reduce their tension levels, increase their social skills functioning and decrease unhealthy fear and anger levels. These courses were two hours in duration and took place weekly over twenty-four weeks. Their success levels in reducing criminal behaviour and improving appropriate behaviour patterns were second to none in the country and were reported upon and discussed in national and international literature for the benefit of health and social workers.
The upshot of my six-month courses, fifteen years of research and a ten-year follow up study on 166 group members showed conclusively that at the heart of all problem behaviour and emotional disturbance lies ‘either too high or too low a level of fear or anger in Aggressive and Non-Assertive types, along with too many responses marred by too much mental anxiety and muscle tension’. These problematic behavioural symptoms indicated a course combining relaxation training with fear reduction and anger management and buttressed by improved social skills learning and practice.
Surprisingly, I discovered through my long term studies (leaving aside for the moment traumatic events such as molestation, death, torture, loss etc) that learning appropriate social skills to be essential in the overall improvement of all the problematic areas previously mentioned. I was initially surprised to learn that the accumulative effect of smaller social skill deficits produced greater tension more often than one’s inability to negotiate the larger and more difficult social tasks required of us from time to time. Thus, learning to appropriately accept and refuse requests, give and receive compliments, make requests without explanation and honestly replying to a loved one who has bought you a present you hate when they unexpectedly ask you ‘Did you like your present?’ creates more tension in our bodies than physically fending off an attacker who is out to push you to the ground or who is spreading untruths around the neighbourhood about you to ruin your good reputation! I found that it is the absence of these smaller social skills that are more likely to contribute to your higher tension and stress levels.
The most prominent feature of my research revealed that all the above response pattern types are classical ‘avoiders’ of potentially embarrassing social interaction and that they usually ‘wing their way’ through their embarrassment by refusing to confront the situation truthfully. In short, they simply ‘Just Pretend’.
Who knows? The day may come when someone you like but don’t love romantically may ask you to marry them. Will you be able to answer them truthfully and let them down more gently than providing them with the more usual crash-landing experience? It will be then when you find that what you learned on your social skills course many years earlier are transferable to many situations that contain similar aspects to them. You could even discover that being on that social skills course three years earlier, and learning how to refuse the request of your foreman to work overtime, actually prepared your appropriate response on the more serious occasion of refusing another’s an offer of marriage appropriately.
There is so much in life that comes on us unexpectedly, and before we have time to think what precisely is happening or is being asked of us, our usual response pattern has automatically come into play. There are so many situations in life that we face that we don’t know precisely what to say or do for the best, so we just try to wing it by ‘Just Pretending’.
Love and peace Bill xxx
