Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

 

    I met Damon, the artist, in the cemetery and gave him half the cost in cash. We reviewed his plans. He called at the end of the day to say he was done. No wonder he wanted half before he started. He charged an outrageous amount of money. He said he would be finished by the end of the week. It took a few hours. Oh, well. The folks who gave me his name at Bonded Materials tried to warn me. He is also the only act in town.

   I had a session with Adolescent D. We started with the letter tracing exercise. I don't know what effect the exercise may have. I do know he likes to do it. Thirty-five years ago, Emmie Spies told me that there is a relationship between handwriting and attention. Attention is one of D's problems.

     D is dealing with self-hatred because of his disability. Unfortunately, anger at self is a normal reaction when we can't function like others. I told D that if I thought it helped for a minute, I would encourage it. However, anger at himself for his reading problem works against fixing the issue because it makes him want to avoid it.  

   We sat with his anger; it ran hot and then to cold hatred. (The trick (and it is a trick) is to observe the sensations of anger and hate with a calm mind and curiosity. If you haven't experienced the effect of this, it sounds weird. If you have succeeded, you know the bad feeling dissolves.)

   As the session progressed, I didn't have a direction. We sat in silence and observed sensations. Then this question came up: Why do I hate myself? Fantastic. Confusion is wonderful. It means he's prepared to question what he is doing now. I'm not talking about his conscious mind. The unconscious mind can hold different perspectives or opinions than our conscious ones. We are not just what we think consciously. If we want to gain control over ourselves, we must be aware of our unconscious bias. While our conscious minds must be open to change, it cannot affect change.

    Among other problems, D's memory is poor. I thought of working with him on memorizing sight words as I was with Twin E, but I thought better of it. He was in a confused state: that's a great improvement. I was afraid if he experienced failure, it would tip him back into being overwhelmed with self-hatred. Better to wait until he has made more progress in lessening his adverse reaction to making errors and reading in general.

    I had Mama K's crew. I worked with Twin E on the Fry sight word list. She is in third grade and still struggling with the words in the first list. I told her she was ahead when I started tutoring her and her sister. I thought she would be the one who made the better progress and worried about Twin A. Then Twin A showed an improvement in her memory. Twin E always tries to decode words consciously. She has to force herself to use her automatic memory. Then, when she does, I can see she is not using the correct part of the brain to have success.

     I continued watching The Morning Show. I'm enjoying it.