Heartbreak Resistance

It's very personal. What is most person can become the more universal when expressed. I'll leave some of that really personal stuff out, but I'll try to tell enough of this story to make you understand how much of a cross-roads it was for me. Well, maybe I shouldn't parade a story this heartbreaking here, since everyone knows who I am here in real life. Ah - I guess it doesn't matter what the content of the problem was. You can guess. It was a baaaad thing. Instead I'm going to talk about the solution.

You know all the stuff people tell about how to get past your self-sabotage? Well, it doesn't work when things are really baaaad. This is a story of what did work for me.

The problem was a huge gaping wound. It had already been resolved, and now I had to deal with how I felt about having resolved it the way I did. Talking about it didn't help. Crying about it didn't help. Freaking out about it didn't help. Couldn't stop thinking about it either. It was eating out a heartbreak.

I'm trained as an artist, but for some mystery reason I was resisting making art. I think what happened is that this thing heartbreak was preoccupied with bothered me badly. Suddenly, making the art became less stressful than everything else I was experiencing.

That's the thing about resistance that I've just learned about from a podcast by Barbara Sher. Learn it yourself here.

Behind resistance is an avoidance of something important, something that totally makes sense. You've got to find out what that is, because it's often hiding from you. Using positive affirmations just signals the resistant part of you that it's time to protect you even more - positive stuff doesn't really work. Positive thinking never helped me stop procrastination; it actually made it worse. In fact, using affirmations can make the resistance so strong, it can cause me to hurt myself to put a stop to all progress. As my friend Chris once said, "Got in a fight with myself and I lost."

If you can find the source of your resistance, then the stress and pressure of not being able to do the thing vanishes. You can go forward with no problem into whatever you've been avoiding. The tricky part is finding something inside of yourself that part of you is dead set about protecting you from noticing while you're busy running in the other direction.


So that's what happened with me. My concern that was eating at me finally outweighed the resistance I'd been experiencing about being an artist. I began to make art. I had to make art - I had no choice. I painted and painted and painted. I hung a huge roll of paper on the wall in my garage and slung paint at it. I pulled out another length of paper, got more of the paints and did it over and over and over. I painted like a fiend for a solid week.

I felt better.

A week later than that, I stood back and looked at the art. It was completely and totally abstract. I had done it without any thought of what I was making. Yet, somehow, accidentally on purpose, images, symbols and scenes had emerged in every single painting.

I sat there and looked at what I had painted. I hung them all over my walls and looked at them. they went floor to ceiling - they were huge. Somehow, these paintings had turned out to look like exactly about what I was upset about. I don't know why I was surprised about that. All of the images in every one of these paintings was directly related to why and how I felt about being upset.

What I had painted in each picture was just like one of those "magic" drawings for kids in "Highlights" magazine, (does that magazine still exist?) where there were images hidden in other images, and it was a game to find what they were and where they were. I had done it by slinging paint around - completely by accident, yet, obviously not by accident at all.

The whole process of what happened totally blew my mind. How could I have been painting completely abstract and had these images emerge in the work? What was really going on that something like this could happen? I rolled up these paintings, stuck them in my storage unit. Later I burned most of them. Think that I have one left somewhere. I have never again painted like that since. It scared me, but at the same time, being able to paint like that satisfied something big inside of me.

I've done little glimmers of being able to paint like that before. I'd been told that I could be a great painter by someone who knew enough for me to believe they knew what they were talking about. They said, "Not just good, not just famous - but great." Tried it for a little while, being a painter. But I didn't like the art scene and had no clue how to get into a gallery. So I became a sign painter. It allowed me to work big, which was something I liked to do. It paid the rent, which was also nice. I didn't like painting in a studio, I liked painting where there were people around, so painting on the street was fun for me.

The really weird part was that, after making these hugs paintings, I wasn't upset anymore about this thing that I'd been preoccupied with for months and had tried to accept but couldn't. Whatever I had done when I painted had resolved what I had been so upset about. It scared me that in order to paint like that, I had to feel that intensity of emotion. But painting worked as the solution to express the pain. I guess it worked because the pain got expressed in a non-verbal way - accidentally on purpose. I did something to externalize how I was feeling that went beyond words. So now - art is what I resort to when I can't use words.

So now, even though it's can be difficult to remember what works when I feel that nothing is helping me. When I get really stuck, sometimes it dawns on me that I can paint.

What do you do when nothing works to express how you're feeling?  

Worried Today, Time to Make Art

Thinking of what to do to improve the level of my own happiness today. I'm worried today because money to pay rent hasn't appeared on the horizon. Realized that making art has worked for me before when I've felt like a deer in the headlights, so decided to draw a picture of a kitty who was nice enough to tame herself so I could be her friend.

Shared her with Janet after I began a mobile lifestyle, so I even have corroboration about how unusual this kitty truly was. This pussycat became my icon for the proof that a specific character could surpass the character traits of her species. In her case, she was thoughtful and compassionate about others, when felines are known for being completely and shamelessly self-involved. I wrote about her story previously here.

Her name was "Squeeker," affectionately known as, "Ms. Vanilla."

Most Magnanimous Kitty - Ever

All my cats have had "theme songs," usually parodies.

Squeeker's theme song is sung to the tune of

"Look At That Stupid Girl" by the Rolling Stones.

~I'm not talkin' about the cutest squeak she has.... 

~ Look at that fluffy kitty

~ I'm not talkin' about the ever-wafting baths... 

~ Look at that fluffy kitty

~ The way she packs a punch

~ Poor mice fast become her lunch

~ To me the sweetest cat in the world

~ Greet that fluffy kitty!

~ I'm not talking about the kind of dust she wears

~ Check out that fluffy kitty...

~ I'm not talkin' about the twisted fang she bears

~ Look out for that fluffy kitty...

~ The way she bathes her friends

~ Her peace-makin' never ends

~ Her lack of vanity plus times ten

~ Gotta pet that fluffy kitty!

No Other Night

In my late twenties, I had joined a Brazilian dance troupe. A fellow dancer, a Brazilian, had asked me out on a date to a Brazilian nightclub. After he picked me up at my girlfriend's house, he grilled me about my relationship to her. When I asked why, he indicated that us two girls had been so much more affectionate to each other saying goodbye than other women in America. He wanted to know what made us different from the other, more commonly not-so-affectionate women. I explained that some people grew up in families that were much more physically affectionate than the prevailing culture. They find and bond to each other as friends privately once they reach an understanding of what their displays of affection mean.

He turned to me and said, "Be with me tonight as if there were no other night."

What he meant was, "Feel free to be as affectionate as you would like with me. I will not imagine you are giving me permission that you are available sexually before I know you." I'm sure he had no idea how romantic a phrase he had just uttered to me, being new to the culture.

So we walked into the Brazilian club with me having a much more interesting understanding of Brazilian culture concerning the display of sexuality. I took to heart his suggestion, and it attracted quite a bit of attention in the whole club - attention from women as well as men.

The owner of the club invited me behind the bar in the noisy club. He gave me a copy of the album of the band. When I asked him why he was giving this to me, he told me, "Because tonight you act like a Brazilian woman - you must go to Brazil."

With almost every guy's eye on me, I turned to my very respectful date and said - "You see, this is why I do not display my natural sensuality. I am not sure I like all these eyes staring at me, watching my every move. How do I put an end to this unrelenting attention of all these men in this club?"

After asking my permission to solve my question, he gave me a big, sloppy kiss. Every other man looked away. Evidently in Brazil, once a woman indicates she has chosen a man, she is then unavailable to all the rest. Have to admit, that it did effectively solve the problem at hand.

Being Authentic

    There's a cost to being generous and to then draw personal boundaries.

    Certainly being "honest, real, and ethical" as defined by yourself is a good thing to do. However, if you care about others, you still must deal with how others feel about how you're acting. How do you want to affect others and the situation while communicating effectively?

    It's wise to choose your battles deliberately. Sometimes it's better to tell a white lie and go through some meaningless social niceties than it is to announce your contrariness just out of the starting gate. Asking for permission is more complicated than asking for forgiveness.

    I know I'm an unusual person with unusual values; it's not important to me any more to broadcast that quality to the world. Now I let others figure that out about me on their own. I've learned a little friendly reserve helps others not be intimidated by my lack of social constraints. I decided that I do not enjoy people being afraid of me because of my social "daring." Whereas, I used to broadcast these qualities about myself as my own sense of self.

 

    Tricky to imagine this person in the picture is the one I'm describing, isn't it?

    I have always been surprised how others seem to assign the lowest motive to actions they don't understand. To respond to this, it's best to explain motives and go from there. But this strategy always made me feel the paradox of advertising what's not really there. If it was there, would I need to advertise it?

    Opting out without revealing why is a better strategy. My rule of thumb for making these decisions has been, "keep you eyes on the prize." The virtual question is: "What do I want to create here, and are my means congruent with my goals?"

    Someone who is "ethical" and treats people well is actually is in the act of protecting the other person, while leaving themselves vulnerable. In a perfect world, the other person is being ethical to watch your back, but that's not always the case. So that's why wonderful people lose out, and find themselves paying prices they didn't expect to have volunteered for making the sacrifice. That's one of the costs of "being real." In an intimate relationship, you protect the other person with your ethics, while leaving yourself open. If it works out well, their actions and attitudes protect you. 

    If not, at some point, later in your life you'll get embittered for having put out too much without getting enough back. It's happening to people I know who were real "Givers." They just get jaded and burnt out and withdrawn. It happened to me.  

Just wanted to warn you, in case you're a "Giver." 

Success Wreck

Yes, I've had emotional train wrecks just after major successes as many other people experience. Feels like a tsunami rolling over me at best. Had to take some time to re-group and think carefully about how to provide for my own needs and desires, hopes and fears. This was often days of time.

In order to get some freedom, I seemed to be capable of pretending that I was smart; or at least it seemed to me that I wasn't as smart as others considered me to be. When growing up, every once in awhile I'd get a teacher who was smart enough to use what I had to offer. They must have been wise enough to understood some of why I was acting the way I did.

For instance, my Spanish teacher in middle school was brilliant. It didn't matter to her that having eaten breakfast made me fall sleep during her class every day. She was smart enough to observe that I would soak up everything that was going on around me in this half-asleep state. It was fine with her that she had to call my name to wake me; then she'd repeat her request that she was passing around the room for everyone to answer. The test was that I had the answer that would satisfy her criteria. She was so kind to not penalize me in any way for sleeping with my head on my desk.

Every once in awhile she would give me something interesting to do that would keep me awake enough; the job of making flash cards for the class - or tutoring my classmates who were slower to learn. By the time I had spent three years in her class - I was completely fluent and could think and even tell jokes in Spanish. I joke now that I've forgotten many Spanish words... but the truth of the matter is it comes back to me when I go to Mexico. Pretty much I can tell what someone is talking about in Spanish, but not what they're saying about until I hit the books a bit again.

I knew where this wound came from in my past, but that didn't help much figuring out how to get past it. When I was a kid in the 1950s, I studied tap dancing at a gym - it was also a place where kids got rewarded (with the equivalent of twenty bucks now) the first time they could walk across the length of the gym on their hands. Had a funny flash-back that seemed to be lodged into my body when I attended a stretching class thirty years later as I bent backwards into what is called a "bridge" to "spider-walk" - walk on one's hands and feet belly-up, back arched with one's head hanging upside-down and backwards. As a five year old, I was such a fast learner of routines in the gym and dance classes that the teachers put me at the head of the troupe and had the other kids to just follow my excellent memory.

The problem happened at a huge group recital. Some other kids not in my group sat in the wrong line. When the line of my group was called me and a couple others in my troupe who were supposed to be at the head of the group did not get to go out on stage. I was completely crushed that I'd been pumped up about how important my role was as leader and then no grownup noticed I was not at the head of my group to perform. How important could I be if I was not even missed?

The event producers offered to let me go out on stage with the other two kids in my troupe, but I could not stop crying. My mom even stuck me into the car and drove me around the block to try to calm me down. She tried to give me a pep talk that I was doing what actresses do - throw a fit when I had been short-changed. I had been successful and now it was time for the show to go on. But it didn't work because I had not had any practice in calming myself down after being really upset. I had never gotten so freaked out and disappointed in my sweet, short life before.

I recognized myself in a scene of the movie "Wave Rider." A young girl works hard and skillfully to prove to her grandfather she is qualified to be the spiritual leader of her community. But he refuses to allow her recognition because of her gender. She successfully fulfills many trials, in spite of being spurned, and she is even actively prevented from learning by being excluded from her grandfather's classes - for boys only. In one scene, she has learned complex Maori chants and performs them with tears streaming down her face, in spite of the fact that her grandfather has refused to attend her performance.

For some reason, the producers of that even long ago would not allow me as a forgotten performer to express myself by crying while dancing. Why not? Where is this rule that performers must be happy?

The movie does not go into why the Wave Rider protagonist cannot give up the role she is meant to play for her people. But this is what I need to know - for myself. How can persist and continue to fulfill the role I know I am supposed to play without allowing setbacks to prevent me from eventual success?

Anyone who does not fit into the mold that language usage or culture has established to be "normal" is left to flounder - this is just as true for people who are good looking, talented and smart as well as those who are on the other end of the social spectrum.

Part of being an adult to know what it is you need and go out and provide it for yourself. My own secret has been to figure out how to ask for or get what I needed in other ways, other avenues that did not excite societal reactions, to sneak under the radar...to go in the back door rather than the front door.

I'm not sure that this "back door approach" will work for me in the future. Self-doubt has reared its ugly head for me.

Incarnation Objectives

A friend of mine who had been trained as a Shaman told me he had a special talent. This was to take someone back to have a little talk with the "Advisors" who had been around when the person incarnated. The useful part was these Advisors knew what your particular intent was for being alive. Of course I was interested in learning what "purpose to life" I had intended to play out. Although he cautioned me that once I got the attention of these busy and rather serious ethereal "advisors," I had better be getting with the program if I was off-course - I still wanted to know. Who would want to waste an opportunity like this if it was useful?

The experience was not particularly notable; at the start it seemed to be a garden-variety hypnosis session that was fun to tell about mostly because of the sense of humor of my particular advisors. But the session had an unexpected result. The two of them were a little like an edited conversation between Homer Simpson and Groucho Marx.

The message for me was, "if you want to help people, don't let them obligate you." This message was delivered as these Advisor characters pulled off me a strange webbed, sticky stuff. The session was an interesting experience in synesthesia, because I could hear it coming off as well as feel this stuff sticking to me as it was pulled off the backs of my legs and in places where I'd had injuries. That had never happened before in a hypnosis session.

It was obvious that helping others was my purpose, and I'd been already doing just that much of my life. It was how I was doing it that evidently needed to be reconsidered. Most of the rest of the session gave me hints about specific ways I could take more effective care of myself. Some of these choices of how to best provide for my own needs were in question for me.

What surprised me was the immediate effect afterwards. In fact, it was rather shocking. Soon after, I got a call from one of the beneficiaries of my help. There was a significant surprise in the experience of the call for me. It's as if my dopamine receptors had been scrubbed clean again. Somehow, my friendly Shaman had taken me back to a brightness level of emotional and perceptual sensitivity of decades ago! Somehow, I'd accidentally-on-purpose shut myself off from my own emotional reactions to the people I'd been helping without realizing what that would mean for me. Part of the reason I had questions about how to provide for myself better was because I'd lost this sense.

Of course, recovering my "brightness" knob of emotions had mixed results. It made me realize the cost I'd been paying for hanging out with people that most would shun. This was something that I'd actively ignored because of my convictions that these people needed help from someone - and I had nominated myself to be that "someone".

The experience my Shaman friend gave me has me re-evaluating what I actually do for people and how it realistically affects them. Since I seem to have this bent, perhaps I should be more professional in how I express it rather than personal?

Naaah.

Givers and Givees

 

I know most people think that Christmas is about giving, but what about those who are on the receiving end? Christmas is the one time of the year where it's appropriate to be a graceful and thankful and even overwhelmed recipient. What would giving be without a receiver? Without a Givee, there wouldn't be a chance to be the Giver.

There are so many types of giving.

There's the sort of giving that happens when someone takes you under the wing and includes you in how they take care of themselves, which is a brand of sharing or mentoring. There's the kind  of giving where someone imagines what you might be missing and fills in something the givee never knew they could use or might want to have. There's the sort of gift that works like a tool that begs to be taken for the ride it deserves. There's the gift that has the potential to transform the life of the givee. Or the kind of gift that is an experience rather than a thing that the givee doesn't know about or would imagine was too expensive to provide for themselves.

My favorite is the sort of gift that is no trouble for the giver to be giving, but it has a fantastic benefit for the person who is receiving it. There can even be an advantage for the giver in a win-win situation.

Then there's the sort of gift that "costs" the giver quite a bit, but that person believes the gift is could be so valuable to the givee that the giver really wants to benefit them...and will accept no refusal.

Whatever the sort of gift you have received recently, it's great to think about what it costs the giver so you can be a graceful and grateful givee - and "pay it forward" to someone else if you feel so inclined.

I Could Do Anything, If Only...

If only I...
 

• ...was funnier, could make people laugh.
• ...could balance my desire to take care of others with the ability to walk my talk - for myself.
• ...If only I knew how to inspire others.
• ...if only I would exercise. I hate exercise. I need a goal, somewhere to go, something to do that makes me get out and move. Instead, I think of how much it's going to cost me in money that I don't have to get in the car and go swimming.
• ...If only I hadn't started from being so twisted up physically. Sometimes I am so discouraged that I'll never totally undo the limiting patterns I learned since before I learned to walk.
• ...if only I could afford to fix my teeth, maybe people would listen to what I have to offer. I hate that I have to accept social norms and can't control the petty things other people think about me.
• ...if only my own standards did not expand just ahead of my abilities, so that I'm always chasing behind what I feel I should already know how to do.
• If only I could be a better example that people would recognize as the beauty, grace and effortlessness of where I'm pointed. If only people could see how far I've come, how much I've learned. Instead, people want instant results.
• ...If only I didn't have to educate people before they could even recognize that they desperately need what I have to offer. Why do I always pick these skills that marry the physical with the mental, beyond what anyone else could imagine is possible? If only I wasn't attempting to educate on subject that are "before my time."
• ...if only I could quit training for livelihoods that require me to keep appointments. It's always been such a struggle for me to be on time.
• ..if only I .would get over having "just enough money" to survive. I seem to be so quixotic, always putting the surrender of my beliefs ahead of my own comfort. If I don't have a deadline or someone to show off my work to, I'll drop the threads that could bring me into a position to offer so much more to so many more people.
• ...if only those twenty projects wouldn't be clamoring for my attention, like gremlins. ME! ME! Work on ME!
• ...if only it wasn't so tempting to fritter away my time. At least I don't watch TV anymore, but there is still not enough time.
• ..if only I could stop creating interdependence by choosing others to take care of who are "bad risks" who need my help so desperately. They're energy drains, but I've learned to dance out of the way of their negativity, but this leaves me a dancing fool. So I have these non-functional adults who love me that I have to hold up if I want friends. Other people who are functional don't want these useless people around who are my friends, so they isolate me.
• ...if only establishing boundaries did not have a "cost". I don't like being a respected authority, and yet I crave to offer the benefit of my own observations and resourceful ideas. I'd rather have rapport with people, but my emotional maturity scares people away.
• ...if only I could just be OK as a hermit. I have so much to do to "polish my stone" that I could pretty much stop relating to people and just work. But I crave belonging.
• ...If only I knew how to communicate what has been so valuable to me. Even though it takes people into a backlash beyond fear itself, I know it is one way through because it has been so for me.
• ...if only I could live long enough to be respected. 
• ...If only I could accept that in my culture, a woman can only have either respect or rapport. 
• ...If only I could find a way to marry rapport and respect, because at heart I know am a teacher who is brilliant at rapport and at simplifying what others have stumbled over for decades.
• ...if only I was better at managing groups and could accept that I will never be "normal." 
• ...If only I could believe that I don't need to be an authority that part of me loathes, because I feel as if I'll be squished like a bug if I show my own brilliance. I can merely have something to communicate.
• ...If only I could find a way to present what I know is valuable so that others could recognize its value.
• ...if only I knew more musicians. Live music inspires me.
• ...if only I wasn't so long-winded. No wonder I'm not a raging success with all these "if onlys."

So there.

Tactful Bonding

How to express tactfully one's intentions or needs? To marry intention with action - this  is a life skill. If we do not have someone to model after to train this skill in the context of the subculture in force, we are bound to make social mistakes casting around for appropriate way to express ourselves.

Establishing rapport is the most important ingredient. Deciding how to pop the question that may accelerate a "non-obligatory" state of friendship into reciprocal give and take is tricky. Key seems to be noticing how people treat their friends with whom they have already established trust of this sort.

Usually, the answer is often that there has already been a "give and take" in the context of the relationship that you may have missed noticing. Each person has a certain language of bonding built out of unique combination of experiences they find essential to establishing trust. Trust in this context is earned, not a given - although many people will declare that they tend to offer strangers the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

For some people this is attending school with them; for others it is working together. Some cannot trust you until you find out a revealing secret and forgive or ignore it; some keep you away until they have a need so great they must ask for help. As they realize you are stellar at offering what they need and they also find out the offer was not an "exchange," it wakes them up that the two of you have established what connection means. Sometimes establishing this connection can happen by merely emulating the way their family members and good friends treat them - gradually. Sometimes this connection is just that the two of you have more to talk about, or that you sense some aspect in character in common or differing in each other that you'd like to explore.

Sometimes I believe there are people who create energy from being with others and spend it on accomplishment...and people who get energy from doing things and spend it on relationships. It is the category of people who love to do things and spend it on relationships, the more dynamic ones who are dangerous. Sometimes people who like to accomplish things are lousy at relationships, because they're somewhat scared of intimacy. You would want to make sure you are NOT making a deal with this sort of person. Otherwise you might get lost in an endless "deal-making" competitive activity with some "aftertastes" of hidden agendas.

Whereas, with people who are into "hanging out," they often have no problems being generous with their time because they will be getting a benefit from your presence, without any directed benefit. No "invested interest" or agenda, in other words. It was modeling those connecting people can allow a dynamic person suggest to "take turns" benefiting each other to establish a warm and fuzzy feeling of mutual benefit.

Multi-talented Issues

Soon I'm going to be painting windows again for Christmas holiday decorating. It's the most fun I can have and get paid to do it. I think working large is the kick for me - I'm not sure that the content matters for me, but the experience of putting a very large image on a nice, smooth surface is what floats my boat.

But now...now I'm wading through the problems getting the phone book completed - which involve a phone and DSL connection that is not working correctly. Usually I'd expect this to happen in Hawaii, but here, it's a real pain in the butt. So I have absolutely no time. I'm not sure that I like being so busy and so frustrated at the same time.

It's very similar to how I used to feel before I started to accept myself as a multi-talented person. I felt that I had no time and also that I was doing nothing but wasting my time - all at once. I think this comes from being in a Catch-22 situation where anything you commit yourself to takes away the possibility of doing something else. This is a question that electic multi-talented people constantly face.

It's as though when we walk in to a room - all of our projects are like greedy little gremlins that beg us to work on them, making us feel guilty for whatever we are doing. Me! Me! They scream at us in high pitched voices...

If you're interested to see the art I'm about to get to do on glass, I'll back post it when I'm done...

My First Sub-Culture Artist Friend

When I was twelve I used to make art at a table where each of us who shared the table was from a different race or culture. We joked that we all made "highly integrated" art. My art table friend was American Indian girl, who encouraged me to follow her home one day after school.

When we arrived, her whole family (seven more people) were sitting on two couches that faced each other. No other furniture except a lamp, a TV on a table in the corner and a coffee table. The TV wasn't on.

I sat down, squishing myself in where they made room for me to sit as she did. She introduced me to her family. We giggled a little about something that had happened at school that day. The conversation died down. I asked what the dog's name was after some time had gone by. Another five minutes went by. Her family members told me the story, a sentence at a time from almost every person there, about how the dog arrived and came to be adopted into the family. Another long silence.

I looked at everyone. They didn't seem to be expecting anything from me, so I just sat there. We sat for about a half hour. Her mom got up and offered us all iced tea because it was hot. We drank the tea and rattled the ice cubes together. Nobody said anything for the next half hour.

Then as if on some cue, everyone got up. We said goodbye to each other and they asked me to come back again and visit. They said they really enjoyed meeting me and was looking forward to seeing me again. They were happy their daughter had such an interesting friend. I wasn't really sure why they thought I was interesting. Then I walked home, feeling lucky I'd just been in another world where I could be interesting for just sitting on a couch keeping my mouth shut.

I kept making art with her and hanging out with her at school and lunchtime, but I couldn't figure out a reason to come back to visit her at her house and she did not press me to return. She said everyone she brought over to her house did not feel very comfortable there. I wanted to be different, but at the time it was just too strange for me too. I'd never traveled before and didn't really understand that I was going to a different culture when I was really just visiting that house down the street.

 

Helping a Disabled Person

Today I helped the person who handles my mail while I'm away in Hawaii to set up a blog. She's going to talk about having to handle California's budget cuts as a partially disabled person.

Tammy's blog is: here

Tammy has been awarded In Home Support Services hours. She has had the help of someone who gets paid for one day every week to drive her to her doctor appointments, carry things up and down her stairs and help her pick up groceries, as well as do some of the cleaning that would make her back worse. She's a disabled person who lives in Novato, CA.

Tammy can't drive because of the nature of her medication. She used to ride the bus everywhere. She would often walk from Fairfax to San Rafael with pleasure. Awhile ago, she fell on some ice on her deck and developed a slipped disc. Everything changed. Since then, she's needed a little bit more of additional help. Her doctor was nice enough to fill out a sixty page report to help her get IHSS hours.

Now California is cutting IHSS for those disabled people with less than thirty hours a week. I'm hoping that Tammy's blog will make it more clear to people what it is she is facing.

She decided to start writing this blog because of the lame and clueless suggestions that people were giving her. She found herself getting angry at her friends when they began to repeat what the newscasters on TV had said that she should get along without this IHSS help because she "wasn't REALLY disabled." She found herself screaming at people, "Well, who is going to help me? Because I can't live by myself!"

She realizes that being upset about this issue is going to drive away the few friends she had who might help her. She wanted some place to refer people to who thought they had suggestions so their suggestions would be more constructive.

Tammy jokes with her black humor: "By eliminating services, California is helping disabled people to hurry up and die." After knowing a little more about her situation, it's sadly starting to sound true.

Gaining Parental Respect

By the time I was a teen my mom was a widow. We used to have conversations late at night in the summertime, because we were both "night-owls." There was a time for me when I was sixteen when my mom and I suddenly realized that I had something to offer her. Finding out our relationship could work in another direction was a momentous occasion for me.  It was a significant shift between parent and child from a one-way energy flow - to the recognition that her teenager had meaningful wisdom to offer her that the she did not already possess.

My mom had already learned that it did not do any good to complain about relationships or circumstances.  The way she said it was "It's pretty useless to cry in your beer." I had the benefit of growing up in a household where there was not much bitching going on... (I know, that in itself was extraordinary!)

In this particular late-night conversation when things changed, I described to my mom what I was trying to do with my friends to allow us to uncover the reasons why we were having relationship problems. Of course, my mom recited her maximums about the uselessness of bitching and complaining about what was too complex to change. Then she realized that what we were doing was not merely complaining - it was a very original type of problem-solving for relationships that was working for us.

She got curious. She hung out with us kids and asked us to tell her more about what we were doing. We were more than happy to explain it to her and I guessed we did that successfully. She was impressed. She talked about it to her live-in house mate (who I hope was her boyfriend) and they used the same process to work out something that had been a problem for them.   The guy even thanked me and my friends for teaching the two of them how to communicate easier.

Another thing happened around that time. For some reason my mom and I were joking around about seeing each other in bad or good moods. It was a conversation along the line of how each of us knew to stay away and give the other person lots of privacy, and when each of us was willing to talk to the other. As an example of how the other person appeared to us, we mimicked the postural attitude of the other person in a bad mood or in a good mood. As my mom walked across the room trying to behave like me, I have to admit that I was completely shocked and did not realize how sensitive my mother was to my moods and how much she was able to notice about how I felt. She was also affected by how much she was influencing me with her own moods as I demonstrated to her how she looked to me when she was in a good or bad mood. This interaction led us to give each other permission to remind the other person to smile more often.


Many parents can never imagine that their child has something to offer them that is not tangible - although these parents are often the first to declare they have knowledge of who this child is that is not tangible. If you cannot describe and communicate in a way so as to become useful to each other, how can you declare you "know" a person? You only know a part of them. I would say that knowing only a part and attempting to bring forward that part (to the exclusion of all other possible ways of acting) encourages a lack of growth. People who know us well can sometimes have this awful tendency to encourage dependence, even while they are attempting to extend care in hopes of that person eventually not needing to be cared for! Really, a person who knows us well often knows merely habits and patterns and not our potential. In fact, some people inadvertently stifle potential. They seem to only want to interact with their preconceptions of who we have been for them. These expectations come from what they think they already know about us. These expectations can be tragically limiting.



Of course, one solution is to acknowledge the state-specific quality of the self and respect it. This is part of why adult children have trouble "updating" their relationship with their family members who seem to want them to remain the way they were. It's tricky to change your half of the relationship when the other person seems to want to address the outdated part of who you used to be. By doing the work to change yourself and the qualities of how your part of the relationship interacts with others, you inadvertently change the quality of the whole interaction. The other person eventually realizes that you are different and responds accordingly.

The other way is to take the relationship into different circumstances. People are different in different situations - and while interacting with different people who bring forward unique qualities you might have never seen in them. 

Differectioning

I'm thinking about taking this blog in a new direction. I've transferred the content of this blog to another location where I've been posting since then.

http://myhalfof.blogspot.com

So, if you've enjoyed this blog so far, head on over to that address and read more of the same.

I've decided to take this other blog in a much more personal direction.

Content or Presentation is King?

How can people not get seduced by content or what everyone else does? How can people focus instead on strengthening the constructive means - the How of thinking skills? What motivates people to remember to think?

Some ideation (the new word for "brainstorming") on those questions:

• Make the content boring, funny or not make sense so the "How" becomes focal.
• Need ways to compensate for time of arrival. (Blue hat, yes; but I'll bet there are further perceptual means & actions that might contribute to this.)
• Enhance the meaning of the result - in a sense, make the goal more attractive. (Such as in story-telling and testimonials of how people have benefited.)
• Make a way for people to interject as they are respond to what other people have done -" I could do better than that!!"
• Appeal to people who love to brag or show and tell, they will popularize the activity to others and make it into a "fad." ( Bumper stickers, Badge of identity - "I Think Before Reacting. ...Usually!") ...would be great on a car bumper.
• ;o)

OK, back to the question itself. For me, questions that are framed in "opposites" beg to be restated in the positive. (Thus, my proliferation of restatement.) What is "opposite" is culturally defined. Instead, take away the implication that one concept is at odds with the next concept.


Some of these could be:
How come thinking tools - and frameworks - improve thinking skills the way they do? Can we describe more about how thinking skills and examining the frames of how we are thinking work more effectively than discussion to better, problem solve & create?
Frames...Re-Framing...Why not draw more pictures (mind-mapping style) while linearly discussing to help note our tangents and return to what has been left out? (Mind-mapping in this case would be used during discussion as a variant of recognizing the value of framework.)

So, reversing the directive here: Transform discussion by applying tools of thought. (As opposed to the urge educated people usually have to imagine we can transform thought by applying tools of discussion, ie: taking turns at lecturing.)
Since, seldom is there "only one" answer to everything... once we ask that question some of the answers might be...

• Take out the desire to convince (the debate model) from the discussion activity.
• Go slow - speed of arrival tends to activate habitual routines, as well as get everyone excited & encourage them to compete for things like "most original", "fastest delivery", "limited time."(That's why this medium is so wonderful! I can take as much time as I need here.)
• Ask specifically for a certain person's contribution. (This brings reticent people forward, because talking style doesn't have anything to do with thinking ability and this action might minimize competition.)
• Ask others to figure out other ways to invite contributions.
• Allow 'secret ballot' contributions. - (The idea of a free-play space without the authority of authorship where ideas are separated from who had them.)
• Get A.I. to do the presentation for you?
  

Then the second question: Understanding vs Practical Application

Since I was a person who tended to use words such as "Never" and "Always" I have learned to spot these words as an indicator that some powerful assumptions could be in place that might benefit from examination and revision.
Idea: Identify certain words or perceptual cues as trigger indicators that Thinking Now Would Be A Good Idea

Let's say skillful use doesn't come from habit, it comes from fascination. (That has been the case with me.) How to foster fascination for applying what you "understand"?

Perhaps appeal to the "gamboling chance" of novelty: a significant result or insight often occurs unexpectedly. Hindsight is 20/20, but foresight is...boring and careful. What if thinking skills, i.e: foresight were presented as a way to get ready to be lucky? A way to shine intuition? A person would hone thinking skills because it would sometimes result in a "jackpot" of benefits. Most of these "jackpots" of major scientific discoveries come from noting accidents. Insights come from noting points that were never before combined.

These new accidents don't have a chance to happen if experimentation is not allowed. This photo taken by Marti Holland out his back window looks like a Maxwell Parish painting, but it's just a photo. "I make as many mistakes as it takes." - Kenneth Feldsott

So practicing the tapping of the unknown would extend tolerance for unfamiliarity. What is new feels strange, unclassified, so a tolerance for what feels strange at first needs to be practiced. Otherwise people revert to habitual means, and the ease of creative thinking is regarded as "hard to do."

This could be practiced at a perceptual level. (Provide people with perceptual illusion experiences to butter them up? Make them laugh?) Sustaining a state of unanswered, unknowable questioning enhances the ability to be open to spotting an assumption that had been overlooked, the inception of discovery. Perhaps there is a pre-discovery phase we are passing over without noticing? Make a list of your favorite virtual questions...