The balance between environmental impact and the freedom to choose your own response, is a difficult line for me. I find it comes up in work all the time. I imagine "if we just did _______" we would be setting kids up for success. I know that environment and setting the scene can be important. I see it all the time. That being said, it isn't the only issue, and in trying to remove unnecessary barriers, we often just create a different obstacle. Responsible planning can only get you so far. Then it becomes the other person's choice. This is often the great issue I have in family therapy, seeing parents who expect more of their children than of themselves. "If they would just change, I would be happy." I of course get lost in this pattern too, if my clients are doing well, I feel proud of my work. If they are doing poorly, I worry I am doing something wrong. Its a big relational mess, and very easy to get lost in playing out your own drama, EG. trying to save the kids to save yourself, or getting all of your meaning in the work.
I am not sure there is a right answer for the balance here. I think it's more about holding these factors with a critical eye and juggling them. I think that is the human experience.
Sometimes my supervisor pushes me on personalizing stuff inappropriately, it's a great reminder, and I often bring up situations that I know are hitting me different because of that. I don't tend to bring up the ones that I am not nervous about, and the ones I am nervous about are the ones that I know I am personalizing, questioning my response, not necessarily the clinical road forward -though I do sometimes need help with that too.
-I think it says more about my lack of support in my own life and lack of getting meaning from other things than about my professionalism. I don't take her pushback as a criticism of my character, I take it for how it is intended, to support my growth and boundaries and so that I do good work without imposing my values/beliefs on the client. Often enough, I am doing good work, but questioning my internal motivations for it, and that's why I bring it up.
But then at night I question my balance, my true beliefs. Do I believe my students are resilient? Yes, but do I fear that they aren't? Yes. Am I always able to tell which I am operating on in the moment, no. I need mirrors to do so. I need people to remind me that my suicidal client isn't in the hospital because I did or didn't do something. I need them to remind me that my client who is doing well, made the choice to do so and it wasn't about my cajoling and manipulating or making the perfect scene.
How much is my own personal work interfering in the work of the clients? I don't know. Sometimes I lose myself. Sometimes I act in fear. Sometimes I am caught off guard by the degree to which we are all suffering and deluding ourselves, and then a moment of clarity happens and I respond with worry that we are 10 steps behind where we "should" be.
It's difficult to reconcile it all.
I watched a funny video about introverts tonight and felt less shame around all of my avoiding tactics. But I am also very aware that I am not really moving forward in a lot of areas of life - or it feels that I am not. I suppose this mirrors the larger society, we are in a time of stagnation if not outright decline.
I think about how for many years my family reached out to me, and I half heartedly responded. Now I am wondering why I don't hear from them more often. I think about how many of my friendships have fallen by the way side over the past 10 years. How I can name dozens of people I used to see daily/weekly and now haven't seen in years. I think about how some of these people were good for me, even though I didn't always follow through. I wasn't a very good friend, and it made me want to be less of one. I think about how others gave me a purpose, but I didn't feel they were there for me, and so I pulled away. I think about how my interests have narrowed so profoundly, almost like a researcher in Grad School who has a single tiny topic and nothing else to talk about. I am that... but my topic is humanity, and people find that surprisingly tedious or vulnerable.
I fell asleep at my desk, then dragged myself to bed around 7ish. Woke up at 10. It is now 1:20 AM.
I have a lot of work to do, but for some reason this existential stuff seems to give me permission to step back.
I woke up and missed Antigua and San Cristobal. I missed sitting in a colonial city, and just existing in the heat. Eating tacos. Not worrying about responsibilities.
I miss writing, poetry and stories. I am forgetting my characters names. Forgetting the imprint they once had on me. Maybe I won't return to it? Maybe I am gathering more stories and ideas. I don't know. The writing had become nothing but editing. My imagination wouldn't push the story further except in little bits in the middle of the night. But that doesn't create a chapter. Sitting in a coffee shop and just writing until there are pages creates the chapter. Then the editing a million times makes it something worth reading.
Fuck I miss life before quarantine. It felt more laid back, more space to exist.
Lately I have been wondering why I have to be at a computer all the time... like I am avoiding sitting with it. Like I am afraid of existing. I think I am spending ridiculous amounts of time trying to drown out my mind with entertainment. Last night when I was going to sleep I did a few body scans and realized that I hadn't just sat in my body in a long time. Hadn't exercised other than walks.
I dunno... more and more cut off. Feels like I am lost in the matrix.
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