Sunday, November 21, 2021

Sunday, November 21, 2021

 

    I’ve fallen into obsessive thinking.  The good news is that I have more control over my behavior than I did when I was younger.  I can function smoothly when there is something to respond it.  I have learned ways to deal with other people and life circumstances. I couldn’t do that when I was younger. My emotions affected my behavior. Thank God for my forty-five years with Mike.  No, he was not a perfected person.  He was also anxious, maybe more so than I was.  I can only hope that my presence in his life gave him some relief from his fears as his presence did in mine.  

   I had my 9 am Sunday morning session with the M & W sisters. They were still on Oahu visiting their paternal grandmother and a dozen or so cousins. Families here are all good-sized.  When I reread first-grade M’s story this morning to see what revisions I could advise, I discovered that I had misread something she wrote yesterday. I added something from my own mind that wasn’t in the story and tried to get her to clear up the problem.  I told her I had done so and apologized.  I didn’t think she understood what the apology was about, but she did understand an adult said they did something wrong and apologized to her. I made a few suggestions on improving her story, reconciling the tenses and using a complex sentence instead of two simple ones.  She wasn’t interested. I left it as it was.  Her confidence in her ability to write a story is more important than producing what I consider a perfected one. 

  With sister #2, fifth-grade W, we continued applying Phase I. However, I started using eighth-grade material with her. Her comprehension was excellent, even at that level.  When I first started working with fifth grade W, she was uncomfortable. She doesn’t do discipline well.  She felt more relaxed today. This would be great. Her discomfort with much of the work exhausts me.  I want to be clear; there are no problems with her behavior. She is cooperative;, does what I ask her to do. She just hates every minute of it.

        I hope that this application of Phase I will affect her reading as it did mine. When I made the 5 Stories tape, I saw an immediate improvement in my reading speed.  I had just completed my MA in reading with straight As and I had a 760 out of 800 on the Verbal section of the GRE.  Did I mention I was 58?

  Two NPR shows this morning were designed for my needs. Both On Being and New Dimensions had shows on meditation and how to cope with fears and sorrow. Elizabeth Gilbert was on New Dimensions.  She spoke about letting go of hope for the future. It is that I am worried about.  I see coldness and loneliness in my future.  People who can’t relate to me the way I need it.  I was so scared. Gilbert started writing to what she calls love. She started it when she was most desperate. Love answered her right away, saying that it was there, would always be there; she would never be alone.  I sat down, spoke to love, and discovered it wasn’t there.  I believe my parents were passionate about me, their child, as they were about my sister. I felt some love from my father, true delight, and acceptance. However, I never felt that from my mother. She had too many fears, too many agendas.  I can say I felt it from her at the end of her life when she lived with Mike and me for her last eighteen years.  Then I was the one in control, the caretaker.  I felt even as a child, that was what she needed me to be. How does a four-year-old become a loving parent to a disturbed forty-year-old adult?  Mike was my conduit to love, to feeling loved, and to being a loving person.

   The guest on New Dimension, the next show, said she spent much of her life unaware of her fear. She did not realize how much of it was driving her life.  I can remember when I first became aware of fear. I was eighteen years old. My behavior was so off, my psychology professor recommended I get help and referred me to the school psychologist.  The therapist was a jerk in many ways, but she did get me started on the path to self-awareness.  I remember surprising myself by explaining my behavior, saying, “I’m afraid.”  Yes. I was terrified.  Fear has driven most of my life.  My mother was driven by fear. I called her the high priestess of fear.  She embraced it.  I can appreciate it when we get caught in our own paradigm and embrace it as a defining reality.  It’s so hard to get beyond ourselves. 

   As I struggled to get my fear under control in the here and now, I remembered something a colleague of mine said when I was worried about global warming, a new ice age. Eleanor said, “Betty, never worry about the future. It won’t be what you’ve been worrying about anyway.” It may be better, it may be worse, but it won’t be the same.

   I finally had an appointment with fourteen-year-old A from Canada.  His mother knew about me because I worked with her ex-husband, A’s father when he was in high school. The mother and I met face to face twice over the years.  She wanted me to work with him because he had trouble getting his homework done.  I concluded he had problems with logistics; he didn’t think of chores as a series of steps.  Also, he was easily distracted.  The last session left me feeling adrift. He didn’t see he had a problem; how could I help him? I cut that session short. I needed his mom to come in on the session and share her point of view.  Well, she listed three of four problems that had been resolved. He no longer got lost in electronics or his thoughts when he was getting ready in the morning. He proceeded efficiently and was ready when it was time to go. She thanked him for that change. In addition, all his homework was done.  He had even done a lot of it in school.  There was at least one other change.  I went from feeling ineffective to a miracle worker in a few minutes. Lovely.  We decided that additional sessions were unnecessary for now. However, there was another son, a twenty-one-year-old, that was having problems.  This boy is a perpetual victim. He believes everything should go his way; he should be allowed to do what he wants. He’s shocked and hurt when it doesn’t work out that way, a victim.  He believes he should be allowed to be on his phone as much as he likes at work and not be fired. He has lost several jobs because of his behavior and doesn’t get that it’s on him to make the change. I told mom that I have difficulty with people who see themselves only as victims. I find them lethal and unmovable.  If I got frustrated with him, I would have to stop working with him for fear of becoming abusive.  

   If I do work with twenty-one-year-old D, I had the thought of giving him an exercise Buddha gave a grieving mother. Collect a mustard seed from everyone who has never lost someone to death.  In D’s case, collect a seed from everyone who gets exactly what they want at all times. Disappointment is a big part of life. What separates the boys from the men is our ability to deal with it.