Tuesday, October 1, 2024

 Tuesday, October 1, 2024 

  I am always at peace when I go to bed. Lord only knows why since I can work myself into quite a state of despair in the early morning hours and during the day. I slept well until  2 a.m. I was probably up earlier, but that's when I checked the time.  I managed to avoid the worst state of mind.

   I finally got through to Jean, my Hanai sister, in New Jersey.  Her health has been deteriorating over the last year, and it is her primary, often, her only focus. Our conversations are limited to details of her distress. Her biggest complaint is about her bowel function. While this is no trivial matter, Jean has made her circumstances worse by not doing her best to resolve the issue. She needs to exercise to strengthen the muscles that support elimination. Jean doesn't do it.  She's too uncomfortable with her constipation or diarrhea to do it. It's a catch -22.  She's having pain because she won't exercise, and she won't exercise because she is having pain.  Jean's never been an athlete. Those of us who developed physical skills know the need to work through pain. Moreover, we know the difference between 'good' pain and 'bad' pain. Good pain leads to healing, strength, and flexibility. Bad pain leads to injury. How do you convince an 80-year-old to view the body in a new light? Good luck! Sadly, she is killing herself with her indulgence, and there is nothing we can do about it. 

   I still have the wasted feeling that comes from inactivity. I'm not sure if it's the after-effect of the Covid or just my underlying grief.  Whatever the cause, my underlying grief is aggravated by this state of mind. 

  I believe in a mindset change to resolve social and emotional issues.  My statistics are not good in my family. I literally do not have one family member who sees me as a fun person to hang with.  There are also people in my life who see me as generous, open-minded, and nonjudgmental. Then, there are people who see me as self-centered, demanding, and judgmental.  whatever the cause, those who don't like me don't think of me as someone with whom they're willing to resolve differences. The only information they give me is that I'm a terrible person. There is not much I can do about that,  and I don't choose to hang out with people who are uncomfortable with me.

   I learned a lot about myself when I broke my shoulder and elbow and encountered a veritable slew of caretakers. Some loved me; some hated me.  particularly informative was the occupational therapist who came to my home for three weeks after I got out of the hospital.  She said when she met me, she thought, "Oh, boy. This is going to be trouble." But I wound up being her favorite patient. I believe in cooperation. But it has to go both ways. 

  I suspect many people don't work that way. Some navigate around others as if they were huge boulders in the road. There's no flexibility.  I see couples who live that way.  It works for them. Assuming there is some give and take, it seems to be a perfectly good way to structure a relationship.  If it's all give on one side and take on the other, or if the give and take is mismatched, there's a problem.  I think the navigation around immutable forces is part of every relationship.  

   having been raised by someone who made no concessions for me, I need some assurance of a willingness to negotiate.  Maybe that's what these people see in me and interpret as an absolute demand. I suppose my need to negotiate is close to that, particularly for someone who considers all forms of verbal negotiation as fighting.  Mike saw me as someone as interested in his needs as my own. In that case, those discussions were opportunities to clarify both our needs so the optimal solution could be found. I loved doing that with Mike. I heard him talk to others about co-creation with the same pleasure I did. That's not to say that everything went smoothly. I don't think there is any solution that guarantees a bump-free ride.

   After finishing my morning puzzles, I lay on the sofa on the lanai, my favorite resting place when I'm not in bed.  I get delicious naps there. But today, I wasn't after a nap. I wanted to get to the bottom of my sadness and see if I couldn't stop struggling. I found a way out. I would have seen it if I had been counseling someone else. But when you're the one struggling with the pain, it's not so easy to be cleareyed. I had a therapist push this idea on me years ago. I told her she might be correct, but I wasn't ready to deal with it from that perspective.  Shame! Shame writ large.  

   My family statistics aren't good. While I'm not sure what it is I do that evokes that much negativity, it doesn't make too much difference.  in each case, I can point out the other person's limitation as a cause of the problem.  I won't argue that I do something troublesome; it's just that no one will tell me what it is.  Calling me a bad person doesn't cut it. To resolve differences between people, you must address specific behaviors.  My family members have made clear they're not open to that discussion. In many cases, I think discussion wouldn't help. The issues are buried deep in the flesh. It would require a commitment to psychological work. I do the best I can at my end. I try to own my behavior and reaction, not just to resolve the relationship, but to heal myself.  In several cases, I have given up any idea of reconciliation. Too much venom, too much condemnation. How do you come back from contempt and the deliberate sabotage of a relationship in the name of self-defense? 

  A lot of my agonizing is explaining why the others do what they do. I don't condemn them. I appreciate they come from their own world experiences.  These people are all reasonably functional in this world, as I am.  But we are all wounded.  

   There is only one situation where I see actual malice. Even that was born out of a need to condemn the other person for their own survival. Most of the evil done in the world is in the name of self-defense.  I sat with my feelings of shame, accepting I was defective. Whenever we're condemned by others, that is a feeling that's evoked. There are rare moments of exception, but it requires a profound alienation and condemnation of the other person, a hard position to maintain.  It's against our natural bent.

    You might ask why I would say such a bizarre thing? Because it's true.  We are programmed to take the criticisms of others to heart and find fault in ourselves, whether warranted or not.  Why would we do such a thing?  It's a survival trait. 

   Suppose you are a member of a small band of people traveling through open country looking for food and water and working together to stave off animal attcks. In that case, you better care about what they think of you. If they don't like you, you're out. It doesn't make any difference if they're right or wrong. They have the power. So anyone who feels they have the right to criticize us threatens our lives. Well, maybe not today, but our body brain is set up to believe it. 

   This morning, feeling alone in a profound way, I resorted to a prayer I know works for others. I asked Christ to be here for me.  I can channel energy at will.  I can't say it was Christ's energy that I channeled, but it was calming and gave me a sense of well-being. From that platform, I could face the shame. When condemned by others when we don't know why is the same dilemma Christ faced at his crucifixion. The salvific religions, which address man's fear of his fellow man, neighbor, tribesman, parent, or child, manifested around 2,000  to 2,500 years ago. Before then, deities protected us from the ravaging effects of nature or the tribe in the next valley. The age of anxiety is that old. Before that, it was sheer terror of being killed by someone or something, and it was a valid fear.  We were in constant danger, as all animals were.

  I released anything negative about my feelings of shame and kept anything positive or anything I still needed.  I'm not in the Brene Brown camp that all shame is a useless emotion.  Aside from its value, it's not a feeling most humans can separate themselves from. We're stuck with it as we are stuck with fear and pain. If we can be born without a capacity for pain, there may be those born without a capacity for shame. But it is not part of the original design. They're mutants.  They may pass that gene to others, which may become a dominant trait among humans. I wonder what we would look like as a species then. Would we be better off or worse?

  It gave me relief to just not fight against the self-generated shame. At least I can live with myself in relative peace.

    I met with the twins at 3:30.  Mama K has become enthusiastic about these sessions. I think she was resigned to having two 'stupid' children. The twin's learning was significantly delayed. They had severe memory problems. I heard the dad saying something like they'd have to move in with me if they would make any progress.  It's been slow. They are not on grade level, but they've made progress.  

    Twin E knocked it out of the park today. I'd been listening to speeches by Dahaene about the reading process. He speaks mainly about processing letters. Today, I had her read all the letters in the words in the first sentence. The improvement in her reading was dramatic.  Her comprehension was poor today because she has poor number sense. She felt the difference in size between a newborn sunfish, 1/10 of an inch, and its full size, 6 feet, was a slight difference.  oh, dear! 

   Twin A was falling asleep as we worked.  Oh, dear, on that too. She read familiar words well, but she was lost the moment she hit an unfamiliar word. I walked her through the six-step decoding procedure for multisyllable words. She had no idea what I was talking about.  I teach two adjacent vowels are more likely to make one sound than two. She couldn't follow the concept. She had no idea what 'more likely' meant. Again, no number sense.  These girls are tough.