The Plan

*Pause for major life changes*

AAAAAAAAAAAaaand we’re back.

Hi there!  Thank you for joining me once more.  A lot has occurred in the time that I’ve spent away.  One day I’ll talk about it here.  It’s on my ever-growing list titled: “Things That Really Are Important to Me, and One Day I Swear I’m Going to Get to Them, but Not Today Because I am So Very Tired, and I’d Rather Eat Junk and Go to Bed Early. So, Tomorrow Probably, or Maybe Not.”  When I do, rest assured that it will be an eloquent summary of my innermost processing of topics that are highly relevant and connected to my purpose here both big and small. 

BUT!  Not today!  Today is for venting!  Today is shouting my pain into the internet.  (You know, the place it’s supposed to go). 

Today, like so many days in recent history, I find myself growing frustrated and impatient with adults.  This may seem easy to do, because there are so many adults that are truly garbage humans.  There are also so many adults that are trying their best, and they mean well, but are just tripping and falling all over this thing called life.  Let me be clear, my frustration and lack of patience is not for these obvious targets.  I have a surprising amount of compassion for those diverse classes of people. 

My frustration and intolerance grows evermore for the “educated” and “enlightened” adult.  The adult who doesn’t think they know better.  The adult who knows they know better because they are the grown-up, and they learned about things in school or from their healthy upbringing.  I am starting to believe that these people are more dangerous than those with obvious challenges and inadequacies.  We tell ourselves and our children that we can trust these idiots. Yet, they lead us so continually astray.

Where is this coming from?

Thanks for asking. 

So many many places. 

But, today, in particular, I found myself sitting with a 10-year-old Sad kid.  This is a child that has been through so much, and really needs the universe to give them a substantial hug.  This kid is sad.  This kid has every right to be sad.  This kid is not disruptive.  This kid is quiet, and hopeless.  This kid does not feel that they can ask questions or advocate for themselves.  Sad.  You get the picture. 

We are sitting together playing with slime (as you do) and this child spontaneously declares “my music teacher and I have a plan!”

“Oh yeah?” I respond with curiosity and naïve hope.

“Yep!” Kiddo pipes up. “If I have a good week, he has this plushy that has these squishy things in it, and he said I could have it.”

“Wow!” I join in kiddo’s excitement.  “What exactly is a good week though?”

I’m asking because I want this kid to realize that “good” is a value statement, and it has no specific expectations, or concrete information, for anyone.  “Good” is vague, and confusing, and means different things to different people.  What I consider to be “good,” can be very different from what the music teacher considers to be “good,” and it likely is very different form what the math teacher considers to be “good.”  This is confusing to kids (and me quite frankly) who are constantly looking around for some sign of what we want from them. 

“It means, if I don’t get upset, and don’t use the cool down space,” kiddo clarifies.

*Here’s where I go off the rails*

For a whole week?!  The expectation is that this child does not get upset for a whole week of music lessons, otherwise it’s not “a good week?”   Also, we’re rewarding a week in which this child does not use the identified “cool down space?” 

Step One: Don't get Upset

Step Two: if you happen to get upset (which you weren’t supposed to do), stifle it so that you can stay in class and not use the space we tell you is for going when you are upset.   

Maybe you think I’m over reacting, and admittedly I am exaggerating my response some.  I assume that this adult was well-intentioned. I assume that he meant to encourage the child to feel happy and participate in class.  I assume the best intentions.  It’s this assumption, however, that makes me angry. By attempting, in this way, to encourage happiness, this grown up is saying, uncomfortable feelings are to be discouraged, and doing something that tells me you are upset is not to be rewarded. 

This is the message we all say to kids. We are saying, we want you to feel happy.  We are saying, if you are unhappy, you are doing the undesirable.  You do not get a reward if you feel something other than happy. Ignoring for a moment that the upset feeling itself is a lack of reward. Ultimately, what this boils down to is a message that unpleasant emotions in other people make us feel uncomfortable, and therefore we must discourage their safe and appropriate expression at all costs.

Earlier this year I was talking to a 7-year-old who screamed at me and called me names.  He shouted, for all the world to hear, “you’re not making me feel better!”  He was angry, and I wasn’t taking that away from him.  How did I respond? 

I sat down.  I sighed.  I said, “that’s not my job Friend.”

He persisted. He believed it was my job to make him feel better. I was there for him because he felt “bad.”  What was I doing if I wasn’t fixing it?

 I validated that belief and his anger, and I explained “you get to be mad. It is normal to be mad, and sad, and all other feelings you can think of.  That’s normal. My job is not to take that from you.  My job is to help you know what to do with it when your feelings are so big that you don’t know what to do.  My job is to help you learn what to do with big feelings that are uncomfortable feelings.”

That’s our job folks. It’s not just my job. I can’t do it alone. It's for everyone. We have to manage ourselves, and to ask for help when we can’t.  It’s our job to know our needs and to tend to them so that we don’t take them out in ways that are unhealthy and disruptive and make us feel worse.

We send these messages so early on that what we want from others is for them not to be anything other than “good” or “happy.” 

“No more crying.”

“Don’t get mad if it doesn’t work.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of.”

Your feelings matter less than mine.

We want you to feel an emotion that doesn’t make us uncomfortable. That’s what we will reward. When you don’t, we’ll shame you and wonder why you didn’t make the right choice.  We’ll wonder what happened in your life that made it, so you turned out to be one of those garbage people or those well-meaning adults who just can’t get it together.  “What’s wrong with them?” We’ll ask ourselves, blaming you for the problems you have or cause.

The “functional”, “successful,” “educated”, and “enlightened” members of society will scream into the void at the traumas of the world and blame these people for not knowing how to behave in the ways that we told them all along they needed to.  We will do anything we can to avoid looking inward and identifying how we contributed to it.

I Am A Writer

"My blog is important to me," I have said to myself, a thousand or more times over the last few years.

"I really need to get back to my writing," I thought, kicking myself repeatedly.

I am a writer.  Ever since the littler version of me asked her mommy to help her make her own story book back in the beginning of my time, writing has been a part of who I am. I went through a melodramatic poetry phase. Then I wrote for my school news paper.  I took creative writing in college.  I kept a diary.  Then, there was this blog.  What I am saying is, I have always been a writer, until recently.

Writing has helped me to process all the thoughts, memories, and experiences that have stuck in my psyche over the years.  It has enabled me to truly witness the development of those I help, while simultaneously appreciating my own growth.

For so much of my life, I have felt like a little girl.  This sense of perpetual youth has admittedly been helped along by my stature.  However, that is not the root of the tension.  I write to process this.  I write to discover myself. I write to understand why I constantly feel that I have tricked the world into taking me seriously as an adult.  I write to understand that it might actually be the other way around.  That possibly, the world has tricked me into feeling like a child.  I write, because maybe that's not so bad.  Children are wonderful, and insightful, and should be celebrated.  Does that mean that as I grow up, I lose those things?

I write, so as not to forget myself.

My Imaginary Friend

Like many small children, I had an imaginary friend.  My imaginary friend and I did everything together.  Her name was Little Min.  She was a miniature, older version of myself.  We played together all of the time.  Then, one day she moved away with her boyfriend.  She never came back after that.

What Lies Beneath

"First thing is first," the over-eager young woman said to me. "I want to learn how to control my anger."

After listening to her explain how she no longer wanted to have explosions and get into fights with her loved ones, I indicated that I knew exactly how to help, but that the answer would likely confuse her. She assured me she was up for whatever I had to say.

"Well," I began. "You're not actually angry when you have an outburst."

Silence filled the room. "What do you mean?" She asked.

I followed with my patented schpeil about how anger is a secondary emotion. I explained that anger sits on the surface, and carries with it a variety of externalizations that are easy to act upon. We discussed how angry people often act without thinking, because anger doesn't require thought. She stayed with me, but insisted that her experiences were solely anger.  So, I did what any self-respecting adult does when kids decide they don't know what they're talking about. I bet her a candy bar that I was right.

"Tell me about the last time you got really angry," I invited.

She provided a detailed account of an argument that occurred the night before when her brother had teased her for being forgetful and disorganized.

"Do you like being forgetful?" I asked

"Not really."

"What about being disorganized, is that something you're proud of?"

"I don't mind really," she insisted.

"Does it seem like it gets in your way though?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do your organizational skills make you successful, or unsuccessful?" I asked. I suggested she consider her follow through on homework, her grades, how often she gets in trouble at home, and what for. 

"It makes me unsuccessful, I guess."

"Do you like to be reminded of that?"

She shook her head.

"Hmm, so there's some shame there huh?"

"Yeah!" She responded passionately.

"And what happens when you feel ashamed?"

"It makes me mad," she said.

"Bingo."

I didn't make her buy me a candy bar. Instead, we talked about what would have happened if she had chosen to tell her brother about her hurt feelings rather than explode on him. How that might have impacted her reaction, and if he would have received the information in a way that felt emotionally safe for her. Then, we went on to another example of a time she felt angry, and another. Slowly, we pulled out that her anger outbursts really stemmed from feeling incapable, unsupported, and unheard.

In later meetings, she and I worked to define a wide range of emotions so that she could enhance her understanding of how discomfort and pain can vary more widely than black and white; angry or not. Then, I told her about times I felt angry, and had her guess what feeling I was hiding from her. She made a lot of progress.

Did she stop feeling anger all together? Of course not.

Anger, as I have told her repeatedly, is a normal human emotion. We all feel it, and that's okay. The problem is that we often forget to listen to anger. It makes us communicate in ways that we can't hear ourselves, and others don't want to listen to us. This causes more problems than it resolves. Before we know it, we are angry because we are angry, and the original pain is so deeply buried under a colossal pile of anger that we feel suffocated. The trick to resolving that is to reframe our understanding of anger. We need to learn that anger is a cue to listen harder, to ourselves, and to those around us.

Evolution of Imagination

"Um..could we go for a stroll?"  A delayed adolescent boy asked me one day.   Of course I agreed, and as we walked he asked, “do you like imagination games?” 

I replied with a resounding, “I LOVE imagination games!”

“Would you like to play my imagination game?”

If you’ve read my blog before (which you might not have because it’s been literally forever since I’ve met you all here) this probably sounds like the beginning of my perfect afternoon. Time spent outside, with a kiddo, playing an imagination game, and exploring the themes he develops and works through.  Um…yes please!

Unfortunately, this didn’t go the way I expected.  The young teen walked me down to the football field, and proceeded to tell me the rules to “the game I play in my head.”   The game was called “Clash of Clans,” and if you’re thinking that this is a game that already exists in tableland.  You’re right where I am.  Open-minded and optimistic, but confused.

***For the reader’s information - As I understand it, Clash of Clans is the new equivalent to a point and click adventure.  While there is a back story and one or more goals, the overall action of the game is to “tap” on different parts of the map in order to collect whatever it is they are collecting.  In order to play it, you basically sit and watch the game play itself until it has produced something you can “tap” on. Get it?  Cool.  On with the story!

Kiddo explains to me that we need to build the town barracks, fortress, or some unspecified medieval edifice.

“So,” he says, “first we need to collect wood by chopping down those trees!”  He points toward the northwest corner of our line of sight, at about 50 degrees from midline.

“Great!” I energetically declare, as I grip my make believe axe and start to swing.

“No, no!” he reprimands, as though I’m missing the obvious.  “You just tap here and slide it.” Kiddo then proceeds to “select” the same area he indicated prior, and slides it horizontally on the same plane.  This is when I realize that the game he plays in his head is just that.  It is a literal game, that he is playing in his head. What happens next involves me essentially gaping at him as he seems to project an invisible giant tablet into the foreground of his line of sight, and continues to “tap” and “select” unforeseen areas of the map in order to achieve some inexplicable goals. 

He narrates the whole thing for me.  At times he asks for me to take on a task.  He gets annoyed that I attempt to act it out and explains to me, again as if I were an idiot, that I simply need to tap the thing in the air I cannot see. In theory, I should be tracking it.  It’s not all that complex.  Instead, I notice my heart sinking. I feel helpless. I become slightly annoyed with this game that “we” are playing.  Suddenly, I start looking around for excuses to interrupt the game.  I grapple with the tension between improving our relationship by allowing him to play, or impeding our relationship by sitting with him for a full hour, irritated with our activity.  Eventually I claimed a mixture of “it’s too bright outside for my eyes” (a lame but true fact for those of us with blepharitis and no sunglasses) and “I think you should get back to class so you don’t miss anything.”

Over the next several weeks I struggled with this memory.  I love the unexpected and imaginative things that kids do in their minds.  It is my favorite when they invite me to witness it.  I should find this delightful!  So, why did I find it so off-putting?

It wasn’t until recently that I put it all together.  I was sitting with a different delayed pre-adolescent.  I was observing him to use jenga blocks to create an entire world.  In front of me evolved what looked like a cityscape.  The same wooden blocks were used as mortar and as character.  Blocks spoke to one another, while more blocks constructed skyscapes around them.  I was, to say the least, captivated.  This was incredible.  This kiddo was using his imagination to work out issues.  The conversation between his humanoid blocks was rather unintelligible.  I have no idea if they were discussing world piece, impact of trauma on world view, or just what ice cream they both like, but it doesn’t matter.  This kid was practicing some very useful skills. Whether or not he was aware of it, he was testing the limits of reality, by using his imagination to play out some dynamic scenario. 

This is play with a purpose.  It is how we learn about ourselves and the world, and it’s crucial.  Many species do this.  All you need to do is turn on national geographic, and you are eventually bound to see some video of a polar bear, a lion cub, or tiger pup using play to practice very necessary survival skills.

That’s the difference.  The mind tablet lacked utility.  Kiddo was not using play in the way it was developmentally intended.  He was not practicing social skills.  There were no social skills being used. The game was entirely one sided.  Even when I participated, I had no idea what was going on, and he typically ended up taking over for me.  He wasn’t working through survival skills.  The clashing clans were warring with one another and protecting their territory, but Kiddo just “watched” and then “tapped” when it was over.  The only thing I can see him learning from this process is patience.  The work was definitely not hard, and the topics were flagrantly simple. 

My sadness and irritation then comes to the question of why?  Play exists to help us learn, and kids are incredibly adaptive.  Which, means that this kiddo has got to be working through something, and I don’t understand it.  This leaves me wondering if I have reached that very depressing aspect of adulthood when I no longer understand “kids these days.” Or worse, is this the work of modern children?  Is it becoming a 2-dimensional and nonreciprocal world of “sit and wait,” or “tap and slide”? How painfully sad would it be if children physically reenacting stories turned instead into watching flat projections that no one can see and engage them with? Is our thinking becoming more and more 2-dimensional? Or have I lost my ability to connect?

Turning Five

Image found here

 Recently I found myself seated across a distressed mother asking for my advice.  We were discussing her resilient daughter's most recent birthday.  She turned five earlier this year, and though she was a bit eccentric this girl was particularly normal.  Yet, because of my career path and educational background this mom, like many other parents in my social circle, felt the need to seek out my knowledge.  ̶ This is beginning to happen at increasing intervals.  It's as though my job reminds people that they could mess up their children, and they need to confirm whether or not they have as soon as they are aware it's a possibility.  Fortunately, this has come largely from the well-intended and, albeit neurotic, healthy members of my community.  So, I get to smile and listen to cute stories, and reassure people that their child is alright and any screw-ups made obvious are what I like to call "normal."


On this particular occasion, this nervous mother comes to me to ask my opinion of an apparently odd behavior her child had engaged in the night before her fifth birthday.  She explains that their family tradition mandated that she read each child a birthday story and tuck them in the night before their birthday. However, on this particular birthday, this woman's daughter struggled with her nightly routine.  She power struggled over tooth-brushing, and dawdled in picking out her jammies.  This was, evidently, atypical for this little girl.  She, unlike most children, had no issue with getting ready for bed, and in fact seemed to enjoy the daily routine.  So, my friend was understandably confused when this particularly special nightly routine took upwards of an hour.

But she muscled through it, as all good parents do.  She summoned the patience to apply and reapply toothpaste in just the right quantity.  She tolerated being targeted with whining words as she calmly brushed her daughter's hair, and she maintained composure as the young girl tried on every single set of pajamas in her dresser. After all, this was tradition.  It was the eve of her baby girl's fifth birthday, and she couldn't be more proud of this bossy little girl in front of her.

Eventually, they got everything all settled.  She tucked her daughter in, and read her the birthday story.  When she was all done, she closed the book and repositioned to look directly at her daughter.

"Tomorrow morning," she whispered lovingly, "you're going to wake up, and you'll be five years old."

She intended to go on further, explaining the excitement and pageantry planned for the day, but she didn't get to.  This tireless mother paused because something did not seem quite right.  She looked at her little girl, and saw that her widened eyes were full to the brim with tears.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

All at once, this soon-to-be kindergartener wailed out "I don't want to be five!"  Before she could even respond, the little girl threw herself in her mother's arms sobbing and heaving.  Streams poured out of her eyes, and she repeated in gasping breaths, "I- don't- want - to - be fi-ive!"

Just like any good mother does, she wrapped her arms around her daughter, perplexed by her reaction but modeling self-soothing through tacit and rhythmic shhhushh-ing.  After some time, the little girl began to calm.  Her tears slowed, and her breathing regulated.  The mother waited another minute or so, and then quietly asked "why don't you want to be five?"

And the little girl responded with the answer that would make this mother later wonder what she had done wrong. "Because," she answered, "when you're five, you're a big girl, and I don't want to be a big girl.  I like being four.  I like all my toys, and I like being at home with you.  I don't want to be five."



"What do you make of that?  What does that mean?"  This mother asked me not too long ago, looking for my diagnostic impression of her child.

"It means you've got a smart kid," I said, and I really meant it.

Readiness to Change

I give my dad a lot of flack and some mild public flogging for the excessively rational manner in which he raised me.  My all time favorite thing to razz him about is the time he tried to coax a much younger me off the side of a mountain by telling me I could choose to stay there forever.  As an adult, I think back on this encounter and cannot believe someone would say something like that to a child.  However, it was so effective that I have since made it my goal to attempt this paradoxically supportive intervention.

Image found here

Several years ago I saw my first opportunity.  I was working with an oppositional 6 year old boy.  We had gone out to a special playground for the afternoon.  At some point in the day, he had managed to climb down into the middle of a cylindrical ladder and was pretending to be a caged prisoner.  When it was time to leave for the day, we cued all the children to line up.  After the chaos of transition, we counted all the little heads and determined we were one short. When I went to find him, he was claiming to be "stuck" inside the barred structure; citing fear to leave. I did what I could to support and encourage him, but it quickly became apparent that his "fear" was more related to a distaste for the end of play time.  So, I changed my tact.

"Look dude," I said. "The way I see it, you have two choices.  You could choose to stay out here forever, bu-"
"Fine," he cut me off.
Startled, I stammered "but, like, what if you have to go to the bathroom?"
"Okay," he said flatly. He was still fairly young and thus unconcerned with voiding outside a restroom.
"Um...who's going to feed you though?"
"I don't know," he said with a startling degree of ambivalence. The idea that someone might not was not a reality in his mind.

I attempted to persuade him into seeing that there were better choices available to him.  However, his developmental state did not allow for getting past the idea that he could choose to stay on the playground forever.  I had inadvertently given him permission to defy my expectations. We were screwed. Ultimately, I admitted defeat, and wound up calling my supervisor for back up. She came right out and began the slow but ominous count to three. Problem solved.

Lesson learned. The intervention is a particularly complex one that requires a significant degree of skill and the right kind of child to be able to hear the underlying message. So, I tucked it back into my memory and set it aside for refinement and later use.

Then the time came.

Not long ago, I found myself hanging out with a particularly anxious young woman who had recently learned of an upcoming transition. We sat together as she lamented the difficulty inherent in change.  I listened to her express fear of possible failure upon adjusting to something new.  I validated her feelings and praised her for past ability to manage herself; attempting to remind her this was not her first experience with change. She continued to evidence worries and concerns to the tune of "what if I can't do it?" "What if nobody likes me?" "What if it's hard?" "What if it's scary?" Allowing me to challenge her on all of these concerns but not yet feeling confidence in herself, she joking declared that she was going to wrap her arms around a nearby structural pillar and refuse to leave her present location.

"You could definitely try it," I smiled.
"Really?!" She looked at me with widened eyes, baffled by my response.
"In fact," I offered up. "let's do it together."  I stood up and started to walk towards the identified pillar.  My friend remained stationary; staring at me with a perplexed expression.
"But you know," I stopped and turned back toward her.  "What are we going to do when you get hungry?"
She shrugged.
"I mean, I guess we could probably arrange for someone to bring you food, but that's probably going to make you feel guilty.
No response, minus a slight smile.
"And, what about when you have to go to the bathroom?"
She knit her eyebrows and slumped her shoulders, an expression I had grown to recognize as irritation with a good point. So, I sat back down and continued in a playful manner.
"Even if we figure that out, eventually the paint on the building is going to chip. Then you're going to get paint chips in your hair, and the maintenance team is probably going to need to fix it, which will result in them trying to physically pry you off, and that sounds awkward."

Her affect started to brighten. Together we began to laugh and joke about the various different factors that would make her release her grip on the building.  As the conversation dwindled, I looked her in the eye and delivered the moment of insight I had come to after that cold day on the mountain so many years ago:

"My point is, no matter how bad you want to hang on, eventually something will happen and you will feel ready to let go. It may not be because you want to, and it may not be until after it happens, but eventually you're going to realize that you were ready for a change."

Forcing the Fairy Tale

One of the more memorable children I have encountered was a young woman who had a strong affinity for cosmetics.  Much of our time together was spent discussing the pitfalls of my eyeliner, or the decorations on her nails.  She enjoyed experimenting, and was quite skilled with her materials.  This type of rapport building was necessary, as this adorable and likable child was incredibly insecure.  She had been raised in poverty and neglect.  Described as "the neighborhood child," she spent much of her childhood providing for herself as her ailing caregiver slowly perished in front of her.  As a young child, she tended for the one adult she had to love, and fed herself by journeying to the houses of unsuspecting neighbors who took pity on her.

Image found here

When this phase of her life regrettably came to a close, she was transported in the middle of the night to a family friend's house where she was told she had to stay with no explanation of why or what had happened.  She then lived in transition, without acceptance and space for her grief.  She was shuttled repeatedly between households of adults who believed her to be a burden and treated her as such.  Forgetting her lack of proper parenting, and refusing to acknowledge her own emotional reaction to loss, disruption, and distress, she was forced to abide by rigid and irrelevant rules.

While in my care, she lamented the world around her.  Expressing that adults, well intended and not, had instructed her to believe that the world was an awful place.  She'd been coached to radically accept that life sucks, and it never gets better.  She was in a pivotal place in her life in which she was attempting to construct her own independence within a framework of dismay and artificial hope.

She sought my guidance often about what to expect for the future.  I joined with her in frustration for the "supports" she'd been given, and attempted to convince her that it didn't have to be that way.  I spent hours being real with her, telling her that life gets better, while admitting that it always remains hard.  She listened attentively.  It was a nice story that she liked to hear.  She wanted me to tell it over and over again, but for her that's all it was. It was a fairy tale that I was desperately wanting her to buy into. 

We parted some time ago.  I sent her on her way, set up with as much as I could give her, but knowing it was not enough to fill the unhealed wound that was her childhood.  Though I would continue to think about her, I had to accept that it was likely the last time I'd see her.

Until I recently re-encountered her in a circumstance I cannot fully explain, except to say that there was a stage and an open mic.  I had seen her early on, sitting in the crowd by herself; her hair hanging in perfectly curled ringlets that covered her face.  Near the end of the event, she got up quietly and made her way to the stage.  While up there, she caught my eye and we exchanged amused expressions.  She seated herself cautiously, gripping the mic with a shaking hand, and sang a melancholic version of Payphone by Adam Levine.

I found myself misty eyed as I watched this young woman nervously sing. As she crooned the following words, I was transported to visions of that poor little girl extracted from a situation without explanation and given to people who would not allow her to process her loss.

"I know its hard to remember the people we used to be. Its even harder to picture, that your not here next to me.  You say its too late to make it, but is it too late to try, and in that time that you wasted all of our bridges burnt down. I've wasted my nights.  You turned out the lights.  Now, I'm paralyzed. Still stuck in that time when we called it love, but even the sun sets in paradise.  I'm at a payphone trying to call home.  All of my change,  I spent on you. Where have the times gone? Baby it's all wrong.  Where are the plans we made for two?  If happy ever after did exist, I would still be holding you like this.  All of those fairy tales are full of it."

When she finished, she smiled bashfully at the crowd and returned to her seat.  As she passed me by, I couldn't help but reach out and touch her shoulder.  She startled and turned toward me.

"That was beautiful," I whispered.

She widened her eyes, reached out both of her arms, and crashed into my shoulder.  For just a moment, I gave a tight squeeze back.  When she released, we exchanged bittersweet smiles before going our separate ways.

Automatic Answer Syndrome

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When I was little(r), I was somewhat of a know it all.  If I was comfortable, I could be quite the chatter box.  Any question pointed in my direction likely got a lengthy monologue in response. Sure, I was pretty cute, but even the cutest of little ones can exhaust the attention of those that love them.

After seemingly endless periods of squeaking my every thought and observation, I eventually encountered the much too advanced wisdom of my father.  I recall conversations in which he spoke at my wee tow-head about the concept of noise pollution.  Believing himself to be helpful, he explained that my excessive verbalization was just adding needless sound to the world.  He guided me through picturing what the air would look like if we could see sound, and insinuated that I was soiling breathable space with my desire to talk without purpose.

This was not as awful as it sounds.  Though my not yet fully formed brain was momentarily stifled by the all too scientific advice of my apparently heroic father, I didn't actually stop talking.  It's possible that I may have slowed down some in response, but historic reports of my family members would indicate the inaccuracy of this assumption. On and on and on I prattled; selfishly soaking up the sound space around my loved ones.

In particular, I loved to prove my intelligence to my father.  As you may have discerned from the above story, my dad was pretty clever himself.  I'm pretty sure that was always obvious to me.  I even imagine myself as an infant, craning in his arms, thinking "whoa! this dude is smart!" So, naturally I had to rise to the genetic occasion. As a bumbling tot trying to form my own understanding of the world, I assumed I had to prove my worth by immediately answering every question that even seemed meant for me.

Obviously, I got a lot of questions wrong.  That's what happens when you increase the frequency of your attempts at anything, you increase the chances for error.  Eventually, as it always did in my family, my behavior led to another paternal teaching moment.  I recall a family dinner, with us all seated at the table discussing our days, and likely answering trivia questions to the key of "for an extra two points!"  I must have exhausted the patience of others with my interrupting and attempting to guess at things I didn't truly know, because my father finally spoke out against it.

"You don't always have to know the answer," he calmly stated.  "There's nothing wrong with saying you don't know."  He then guided us through acknowledging our ignorance, and confidently stating "I don't know."  From then on, both my parents would pause us when we demonstrated notable sensitivity to the unknown, and guide us through calling ourselves out.  We were repeatedly coached to practice alerting others to our dearth of knowledge.

I found this activity irritating for the vast majority of my childhood.  I hated telling people I didn't understand them.  I abhorred acknowledgement of my inadequacies in a public forum, and I resisted encouragement to lay it all out on the table.  Only recently have I realized that this ongoing tutelage actually took.

In my adulthood, my academic and professional careers have been marked by my insistent confession of inadequacies.  It is possible that I call out my lack of wisdom all too often.  However, I'm frequently praised by superiors for indicating that I have yet to glean what I need to.  Personally, I often attribute it to my sense of innocence and inexperience with all things "real world."  Though, I have started to notice my own frustration with colleagues and superiors who lack the strength required to assert their ignorance. I find myself often grunting vexation with "knowledgeable others" who automatically throw out suggestions unrelated to the questions I have asked.  My head spins with annoyance when I turn to seasoned professionals who attempt to guide me through basic responses to situations I am comfortable with, and ignore my pointed questions about how to deal with advanced complexities.

My initial assumption was that this played on my own inadequacies.  My primary response was to think "they must really think I'm stupid if think I've forgotten the basics," but then I realized it wasn't this at all.  Due to my own prior experience with automatic answer syndrome, I quickly understood that the truth was they don't have the answers either.  It is they who lacks the knowledge to further themselves. Because they never had support to build comfort with their own lack of understanding, they have habituated time-wasting discussions of things that don't matter.  They don't understand the utility of recognizing a deficit in order to build upon it.

Error-genic

"Parenting," as my father says, "is a job you can only do wrong."

Image found here

 It may seem overly cynical to say so, but I've had a variety of encounters throughout my life that would confirm this very belief. I have worked with and known parents who could be described with adjectives such as good, bad, perfect, mediocre, wonderful, awful, intense, amazing, and even crazy. No matter how I've come to know these parents, they all had one major thing in common. All of their children have had "issues."

In fact, that might just be the prevailing theme in life. Everyone has issues. We all have something we struggle with, some weakness that needs bolstering, and some sensitivities that need considering.  Babies are born into our world ripe for learning behaviors from their predecessors. Their brains are literally programmed to observe and mimic what they see. These learned behaviors impact thought development, which creates internalized responses, and before you know it there's a whole new generation of neuroses walking the earth.

It's an endless cycle that can only be circumvented with acceptance. This is our fate. Whether guarded, defensive, fearful, or reactive, we all have our vulnerabilities. Often times these issues have been selected from a preordained set of environmental, hereditary, and social dynamics. There's little anyone could do to avoid creating issues. It's possible that special focus and attention may have prevented development of a specific sensitivity.  However, it's more than likely that hyper-attentiveness in one identified area would actually create neglect in an another unrealized realm; causing a whole different set of difficulties.

This is not to say that we should all just throw up our hands and surrender to our flaws and shortcomings.  Truly what I point to is the opposite. I bring up our inevitably flawed experiences, in an attempt to point out that we're all striving for improvement.  This experience is not unique to any particularly sick set of people.  We're all working on change and betterment of ourselves, because the future depends on us.

Maturation

In many ways growing up is similar to grieving.

Sure, there are gains, skills earned, and new experiences to be had, but getting older involves a great deal of loss.

As we age, we constantly lose securities and familiarity. The world we have grown to know, changes around us, and we are repeatedly forced to give up things we love.  Over and over again, we are expected to say goodbye to the only things we have ever known. Unknowingly, we leave behind old versions of ourselves as we indulge our maturational tendencies.  Then, we reach a point when we realize we no longer are who we once were.

As a group, we give much of our attention to celebrating milestones.  We honor achievements, and we rejoice at annual accomplishments. However, all too often we forget that getting older means leaving something behind.

Flight of the Wendy Bird

A few months back I began to prepare for the completion of my graduate degree by searching for open employment opportunities, but I found myself profoundly unmotivated to update my resume or make active efforts to embark upon my career.  So, as a method of forcing myself into the waters I applied for the very first job opening I encountered working with my preferred population.  To be quite honest, it was a job I didn't want. It represented a step into the pool for me.  It pushed me to update my resume, and practice my application responses.  I was still in school and completing my clinical internship.  My availability was remarkably limited which removed all the pressure of the process.  In fact, I made a point to note that my lack of availability in at least three separate locations throughout my resume and application submission.  If I were looking to hire, I would have thrown my cover letter out.

I was, of course, astonished when I received a call to arrange an interview.  She described a rigorous interview process that involved a 30 minute writing activity and a case consultation.  Having never experienced such an intense process, I rationalized that this would be good practice.  Again, I didn't want the job.  The pressure was low.

Before I knew it I was called for a second interview involving a mock case presentation and participation in clinical rounds.  I started to feel nervous.  I still didn't want the job, but I was becoming intrigued by the process and I was afraid I was wasting the agency's time.  Knowing I wasn't going to take this job, I decided to just relax and enjoy the experience.  So, when I found myself seated at a table with 12 skills trainers, therapists, program managers, and clinical directors, I didn't really flinch.  I answered every question honestly; revealing my strengths and exposing my weaknesses.  I was comfortable and unconcerned.  This is why, when a loud and energetic man jokingly asked me what my favorite cartoon was, I didn't even bother to let him finish asking "why" before startling him with my response.

I explained that I loved most cartoons, children's stories, and super hero tales because of the allegories inherent within them, but that one stood out among the rest: Peter Pan.  I went on to state that I truly believed this story was a beautiful metaphor for what it means to grow up.  I monologued for nearly 10 minutes about the narrative of a boy without a mother who battles adults as he refuses to grow.  The room became silent as I went on and on about the captivation of Wendy as she is pulled between a world where she has to grow up and one that won't let her.  I wound down with an explanation of Wendy's ultimate decision to have one foot in both worlds.  Crickets chirped, but before the awkwardness set I verbally lunged forward with excitement. "OH!" I started, "and did you guys know that the author of Peter Pan had failure to thrive syndrome?!"  With this exclamation, I surged onward with a lecture about J.M. Barrie's traumatic childhood, and his stunted physical development.  I explained how the novel was a tribute to his deceased older brother who's reputation forever shadowed him in the eyes of his emotionally abusive mother.

All 12 faces stared speechlessly at me as I finished my soliloquy.  My individual discourse had left the entire panel with no apparent segue for completing the interview.  Amused with my socially awkward tendency, I did the only thing I could do.  I called it for them.

"Obviously I could go on and on about this topic," I said.  "I love children's stories, and I appreciate their ability to give insight to the human condition.  So...great question!"

Now, three months later, I call that confounded panel of professionals my coworkers.

Puppy Dogs and Cupcakes

"My last therapist told me it never gets any better," a depressed and deserted child once told me.

Image found here

Partly amused and mostly horrified, I swallowed bile.  "Why do you think she would say that?" I implored; seeking context.

She went on to tell the typical tale of teenage angst and misery shrouded in a deep seeded desire to be independent and grown.  This nearly hopeless adolescent girl explained her forward-thinking desire for utopia being met with the harsh reality of a jaded professional telling her it would never be. Then she looked at me, wide-eyed and concerned, with an expression best explained by the question she clearly couldn't ask.  Her eyes pleaded with mine, is it true?

I sighed deeply and wrung my hands; trying to determine if I was fully equipped to provide this youth with an answer I have yet to discern for myself.  In that moment, my protective mode kicked in.  I wanted to puff up and track down that dream dashing clinician for stealing a young girl's nearly lost hope.  I wanted to tell her it was all a lie, and everything was just on the brink of perfection.  I wanted to insist that, if she persevered a little longer, everything was going to get a lot easier.  But, I couldn't hang my hat on a lie.

Yet, I think we all do this.  As adults, we want so badly to convince our children that the world is this glorious place.  With the best intentions, we tell them that all of their dreams are attainable.  We make it sound so simple.  Pay attention.  Do your homework.  Listen to your parents.  Follow the rules.  Be good for god's sake!  We say this like it's the only obstacle in their paths.  Then we find these children who, despite their best efforts, can't meet our expectations, and what's the message to them?  Try harder.  You must not be doing it right.  No wonder they struggle.

The saddest part of this whole interaction is that I think the therapist she referenced was trying to help.  I think that person was trying to be real with her.  Recognizing the false promises inherent in a follow your dreams world, this woman must have tried to counteract the overwhelming expectations set-forth by inconsistent and unsupportive adults.  She probably wasn't wrong for doing so either.  However, she definitely missed her mark, leaving me with a hurt/confused teenager struggling to rationalize her own survival.  With no other adequate explanation, I told this child what I knew to be true.

"I think what she was trying to say," I said "is that it's always going to be hard.  Growing up isn't easy.  It's not all puppy dogs and cupcakes.  Often it's difficult, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it.  It absolutely gets better, if you want it to.  But there is always going to be stressful things, and what matters is how you cope.  You can build the skills to manage your stress. It's possible to truly enjoy your life, but the stress never goes away it just changes."

In Reality

Image found here

Recently, I found myself sitting with a teenage girl after she had requested to speak with me about her failed attempt to communicate her needs. With an agitated affect, and a irritated tone, she explained her situation to me. She had, on top of all her significant life and environmental stressors, experienced a normal and typical adolescent setback.

Under most circumstances, this setback would have been manageable. Any other typically developing child would have addressed their concerns and had their needs met in a relatively short period of time. For this child it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Although, when you consider her trauma history, this young girl actually handled it quite well. She reported her concerns to an adult, and developed a reasonable plan to address them. Unfortunately, the adults did not communicate the plan with one another, and this girl, whose hopelessness and despair frequently results in depressive mood and self-harm behaviors, did not get her needs met. She instead got stuck defending herself to one adult, when the first had left without explaining the circumstances. The subsequent dispute, spiraled into an argument that evolved into a power struggle, and ended in undesired consequences. Then, she cried out for a therapist, and that is when I entered, as one adult was trying to explain a convoluted miscommunication to a teenager who'd lost all hope.

I stepped in, pulled her out of the stressful environment, and into a quiet room. We sat on the backs of chairs and looked out the window as she explained the entire scenario to me. I nodded along and reflected to the best of my recently conferred master's level ability. Then she finished her story. The room went silent. She hung her head, picked at her finger nails, and waited for my little bit of wisdom. After what felt like an eternity, I said the only thing I could think of.

"This sucks."

At first, I felt horrible. Here I am: the newly anointed therapist with fresh education. I had been coaching this kid on using her assertive communication skills for weeks. I come into a confusing situation, and all I can say to her is "this sucks." What the hell did I think I was doing? She needed answers, and I was giving her nothing.

So, I combed my mind, trying to come up with something, anything, that solved or explained the situation. We sat in silence again. She shifted on the back of her chair, tracing the crease of the material with her finger as she moved. Clearly she was done talking. It was my turn now.

I watched her tilt her head as she peered out the window; avoiding my eye contact. Think of something, I thought to myself, anything. Don't let her give up, not now. But, every intervention I devised felt like a lie. The truth was this was a real life issue. No matter what level of care you require, or how out of control your emotions are, there's always going to be the potential for others to let you down and that sucks. So, I told her that.

I said, "I can tell how hard you tried to communicate your concerns, and it's really frustrating to hear that the adults involved let you down. That's not fair." I went on to tell her how proud I was of her attempts to solve the problem. I reflected that the resulting scenario probably felt like a failure that brought about consequences she didn't want. Ultimately, my final message to her was probably more for me than anyone else. Though, I think it helped us both.

I told her that we can't control what other people do with the information we give them. All we can do is try our best to control what comes off on our end, and that's why it's important to keep at it. You've got to practice the skills to get better at them, but no one can promise that you'll always be successful. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, things don't work out. That's when it sucks the most. When we tried really hard, did everything we could, and it still didn't turn out right. But, if we keep on trying, one day we will limit those interactions as much as possible, and our successes will outweigh the setbacks.

My Objectives

In my previous job it was typical for staff to repeatedly remind the kids of their daily and long-term treatment and behavioral objectives. Imagine things like:

"Oops, remember you are working on putting your own journal away."
"You are learning to use your words."
"We're going to practice ignoring friends that tease, because that's kinda hard today."
and
"You are working on asking a teacher for help."

You get the idea, but there were also the incredibly frequent and surprisingly requisite lessons on social norms. (ex. "We don't ask strangers to lick our faces").

Well, I've decided that I need a specialist to follow me around doing just this. Today my goals would be something like:

"Oops, remember you don't have a maid. So it's your job to do the dishes.."
"You're learning to be self-sufficient. That means you should probably stop calling your mommy every time you are confused about life."
"We're going to practice not embarrassing the crap out of yourself, because that seems to be hard for you."
and

"You are working on remembering if you took your allergy medicine, and therefore not accidentally overdosing."

Okay, my "special teacher" might have more sass than the average treatment professional, but it's all a matter of meeting the client where they're at right? That's especially true when the person is an easily amused self-deprecating therapist in training.

Actually, I might be able to do most of these reminders myself, but I have yet to come up with a solution for the lessons in social norms. Clearly I can't do this alone. If I could I wouldn't have recently asked someone at a bar to smell me. So, who's up for the job? I'll pay you in sardonic comments.

Anyone? Anyone? No?