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Journal of Being Human K no w Y o ur se l f

L ove Being Yo ur se lf

D on ’ t Lo se Y o ur sel f

Volume 1 Number 1

CONTENTS

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Volume 1 Number 1

Journal of Being Human Love Being Yourself CONTENTS

Know Yourself

Don’t Lose Yourself

REGULARS QUOTE

1 H. D. Thoreau

5 There is nothing new under the sun 7 I look and this is what I see WHO AM I? 8 Yuiiyuy u u uyiugrrer COPING 11 httheeehthethrhtehe LIVING DAY BY DAY 14 8i8i87i87i77u7uu DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION 16 Yytu7jyuytjyjyt PARENTING 19 ujjyjjjyjytjyt ESSAY

SIDEBAR PLAYTIME

22 uyjyjyjjj

26 jyjyjyjytjytjytjyt CONVERSATION 29 88o87o8o887ikuku QUESTIONS THAT POP-UP 31 ukruuykkukukuy TIKKUN OLAM 34 uyjujujurjuyjuyjujyujrujurjurj RECIPES 37 kuykuykuykyuk CLASSIFIED ADS 39 Ytu7unhy6uh7y6uhr76 WORD BURSTS

TAILPIECE

42 yhythyhyhythyth OPINIONATED 45 ukuyjykukuykuykuyk LETTERS 47 juyjytyjyjyjryjytj NEXT ISSUE 49 Tytyty tywt ywty wtrywrty LEGAL DISCLAIMER 52 CLASSIFIED ADS

Journal of BEING HUMAN

3 QUOTE

It is a foundational aspect of worthwhile educating and parenting that teachers and parents understand protect and cherish this truth for children and for themselves.

“It’s not what you look at that matters it’s what you see” Henry David Thoreau

ESSAY There is nothing new under the sun “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun”. Ecclesiastes 1:9 Old Testament It’s probably true that there is nothing new under the sun. Maybe it leads some to cynicism, fatalism and powerlessness in relation to the tasks and demands of their  daily living, more so perhaps when one might be losing heart.

I see it differently. Whilst there may well be nothing new under the sun as far as being human and living in this world is concerned, it is also magnificently true that each child, each person and each generation lives grows and experiences the world as if everything is new and pristine and that is the way it should be.

I watch with fascination the times when people describe their ideas, ask their questions and embark on their journeys that are fresh and new and inspiring; the ideas, questions and journeys that human beings have grappled with throughout time. And yet there is a passion and commitment anew each time the same words are said again by new people.

Anti-apartheid activist Helen Joseph once spoke to students in the Jameson Hall. Her face was warm with excitement as she said how glad it made her feel to see so many beautiful young people in the midst of living and discovering life, their lives and acting on the world hopefully with love and justice, embarking on their new journeys, (perhaps as she had so many years previously).

I remember my parents’ reaction to the music I listened to as a teenager so distinctly, (bet you've never heard that before). They could not fathom how I could appreciate let alone listen to such music. Today my own children, surprise, surprise, laugh at my listening choices believing just as I did thirty years ago that my parents were square, not groovy out of touch old fashioned etc. Today the children call my music “average”, a purposefully ambiguous retort designed to confuse and befuddle the current older lot and to keep the partisan generational lines clearly delineated.

In this vein then I claim nothing new in the words I write in this journal. It is just new and meaningful for me and represents the sense I am trying to make of my life in this world.

Equally there is nothing for sale here. Whilst I believe and am committed to what I say, I am not trying to convince anybody of anything with the exception that I am encouraging people to act with love, towards themselves and towards others. What I mean by love will become clearer, hopefully.

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I speak the words, which reflect the interplay of my nature and my experience in the world.

The things that I have found to be coherent, of value to me and true for me so far... that could all change, again, particularly as I keep learning who I am, how I got to be who I am (or who I think I am) and how I feel about myself and perhaps how the world seems to feel about me. And especially since who we are can be a particularly changeable reality despite the fact that we each believe that we know with complete certainty who we are.

ESSAY I look and this is what I see I do psychology that is one of the things I do amongst other things. All the years of training and learning had left me confused and frustrated. I asked myself why there were so many schools of psychotherapy. It seemed to me that virtually every practitioner had found the answer and created a new school or technique or model of psychotherapy; each named after the practitioner. Each claiming to be “the answer, the way”; how could they all be right, have the panacea, the magic bullet?

I persisted with my questions; why were so many people so motivated to invent the theory and model and techniques of psychotherapy, what was wrong with the

prevailing theories and models? Were all these different theories and models and techniques completely without any commonalities so as to actually be unified in some way? Were people not the common thread?

My frustration continued, thus I concluded that the only way to resolve the quandary was to take sides; I had to choose my war. I have never found it easy to take sides in this way; I am usually left with a nagging sense of inauthenticity, a sense of partisanship rather than a sense of coherence and contentment.

Belonging is good yes, but truth is better.

Whichever theoretical technique I aligned myself with left me feeling uncomfortable.

Psychoanalytic stuff always ended with sex, no matter what the problem was.

Behaviourism pretended that there was no person in the body experiencing and interpreting reality; just a black box that could be punished rewarded or extinguished.

Humanism was appealing but carried a sense of romanticism that I could not seem to find easily in the actual world.

But the irretrievably irreconcilable problem for me was that all these therapies seemed to be imposing a pre-conceived template on each person’s life that just didn’t seem to be an ethical or praiseworthy practice. So am I suggesting that the answer lies in subjectivism; only the person’s subjective experience and reality being true? Certainly not, as my brother said, “so if a person says that he is something that he is not should one take that as true?”

Retrospectively it feels like psychology was on a journey of searching for self a journey that is not yet completed, a journey that has resulted in some of the kids leaving home and perhaps having a faribl, not speaking to each other, “because you are wrong and I am right!

I’m the real thing and you are a fraud! I’m a scientist clinical psychologist and you are a Jungian analyst! (I swear that a lecturer who is a clinical psychologist at Rhodes said that) ” Are they even a family anymore, these kids?

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So the winter spring summer and autumn of my discontent continued unabated and unabashed.

I did my honours degree at Rhodes in Grahamstown. The psychology department was well known for its particular theoretical bent; an emphasis on existential and phenomenological psychology. I struggled through my undergraduate psychology years at the other varsity feeling no connection at all to the words I was hearing in lectures.

Then I got to Rhodes and found the connection that I had been seeking. I had found a human psychology, a psychology about people and how they live their lives in the world.

Up until that point people actually living their lives seemed to be almost extraneous to the discipline of psychology, the science of human behaviour. Speaking of science….

At Rhodes, Robert Romanyshyn a visiting lecturer gave a series of lectures on phenomenological psychology.

Amongst many other things this is what I remember him saying about science and human experience.

1.

By its nature science forces a split between what we experience and how we experience; it demands that we distance ourselves from our experiences.

2.

Science demands that we forget the body as we live it.

3.

The thinking eye replaces the experiencing eye. Things become suddenly (apparently) deceptive.

4.

Science demands an increasing withdrawal of the human body from the world.

Science, he said exemplifies the axiomatic determination characterised as a ‘refusal of things as they are given’; the narrowing of one’s focus.

Science is the embodiment of attempts to standardize and classify the world into

separate, discreet, encapsulated bits of so called objective evidenced based reality. And here’s the most important part; “Science as a perspective is a psychological vision; inseparable from a ‘physics of nature and a physiology of the body’…..modern science addresses the minimal conditions of existence”.

Isn’t that simply beautiful in its succinctness and eloquence?

Science that inexorable turbine of knowledge and learning uncovers the minimal conditions of existence; these however, are simply insufficient for the challenge of being a human being.

So the breath-taking work they are doing to find the Higgs Boson (or should it be The God Particle, SM Squared, the Scalar Boson or the Engelert-Guralnik-Kibble-Brout-HagenHiggs Boson) in the hope that the building blocks of the universe will be uncovered is truly reflective of human genius, creativity and determination.

Nonetheless, each of the scientists, the human beings involved in this reality altering quest still have to live their lives day by day meeting the demands, vicissitudes and vagaries of life as best they can with the resources they possess, just like everyone else.

I remember when I first came across the DSM; the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the ICD -10. Wow I thought what else does one need to do this job, the ultimate universally shared definitive classification of mental disorders. I’m just kidding! I found it appalling. We used to joke around with the DSM giving each other quick instant arithmetical diagnoses by numbers.

“You’re a 296.23 with an Axis II V71.09305.00”.

Now some of you may be aware that there is a permanent polemic possibly a battle

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between those who advocate empirically supported psychotherapeutic treatments and those who rely on interventions that are more based on insight and transferential dynamics where problems of emotional regulation have created distortions, illness and suffering.

The “EST scientist psychologists” maintain that; • clinical psychologists are scientists • psychotherapy is based on scientific theory • science demands empirical validation of theory • Therefore no form of psychotherapy that is not supported by empirical “proof” of its effectiveness should be countenanced. http://www.academyprojects.org/est.htm http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/lo oking-for-evidence-that-therapy-works/ http://www.tapartnership.org/content/men talHealth/faq/03diffEBP_PBE_EBT_EST_CDE. php

I am reminded of the statement by Otto Rank; ““Psychoanalysis arrived to save the human soul in a materialistic era sick with self-consciousness and threatened by loss of belief in immortality and in its public expression, religion. Its greatness resides in having done this in the mind-set of our era, not simply symbolizing the soul exoterically or concretizing it socially as in the past, but attempting to demonstrate it scientifically.

But realistic psychology is the death knell of the soul, whose source, nature, and value lie precisely in the abstract, the unfathomable, and the esoteric”. Art and Artist, 1932, p. 109-110, Psychoanalysis and the Soul I remember being at Ingutsheni hospital in Bulawayo and visiting the male long-term psychiatric chronic ward. It was a sad place.

The men were dressed in knee high khaki shorts and shirts some with shoes and some not. Most were walking around often talking intensely to themselves sometimes directing their words at someone else and some were

simply lying on the red stoep that surrounded the building located far off in the sprawling bush of the fenced isolated hospital complex.

As I walked around looking at these poor souls understanding the significance of a long-term chronic facility I felt only devastation for the human lives that had been reduced to this forlorn quality of life; it was life no matter how bleak, it was still life. We don’t see this quality of life; it is usually hidden far from where we live and play.

To my shock I came across a fellow who had been in the acute psychiatric ward of the Parirenyatwa annex just a few weeks before.

We had attended the same school and shared some stories about our common past. Now here he was lying on the red polished stoep quietly but resolutely whispering to himself, his hands intertwined in contortion, his eyeballs strained upwards pointed towards the heavens, unblinking. I kneeled to put my hand on his shoulder but he was not present in any form that allowed any connection to anything outside of his incarcerated, desolate and solitary torment.

So yes here was an example of a 295.2 and yes he was receiving the relevant medication that a 295.2 should get for a diagnosis of Schizophrenia, Catatonic Type. I do not dispute that or even question it. It wasn’t helping much this time.

When I first started my internship at the hospital the registrar psychiatrist taunted me with the question he always asked green young idealistic psychologist interns of which I was one.

“How long would you need to bring this patient out of his psychosis?” He said with a smirk, pointing to a patient sitting in the mattress room.

I replied confidently that I would need only 10 months.

“I will have him back to reality in 10 days with medication”.

So being the irreverent person that I am, I proceeded to ask him if that was so how he

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understood the need for and the role of the psychologist in the psychiatric hospital.

This is what he told me.

“The psychologist is someone we refer to when we require tests, like an IQ test. It’s exactly the same as sending a stool specimen to the laboratory to confirm or exclude bilharzia”.

At that stage I was at a point where I still knew more or less how to shut my mouth, bite my tongue. I grunted turning away from his supercilious grinning face and walked off to my next appointment; an IQ test of a young school girl struggling with anxiety! Big lag!

Today I have no qualms about medication. I have watched too much unnecessary suffering in the lives of people to hold on to the toxic psychiatry lobby.

On a tangent I wish to express the firm conviction based on my experience in the field that psychiatry should be a subspeciality of neurology. Many psychiatrists I know simply diagnose and administer medication which is great, but what a waste of a medical degree which could be used so much more usefully to help people. So I believe that a neurologist could easily include in the practice the sub-speciality of psychiatry. I do not say this to generate conflict, I truly believe it.

If on the other hand a psychiatrist wants to practice therapeutic psychology, then train as a psychologist and refer to the neurologist for diagnosis and medication. There was a time a while back in South Africa when consideration was being given to license clinical psychologists to dispense psychoactive medication. I would need to think about that…maybe in conjunction with a psycho-neurologist medical doctor!

Some years ago I received a phone call from a woman who wanted my help. She was concerned that she might have ADHD and had reached a point in her life as a person, a mother and a wife where she decided that enough was enough. I listened to her and

encouraged her to consult with a psychiatrist which she chose to do. Some weeks later I received this sms/text from her.

“Hi ther. Id like to thank u fr u help n encouragement as i queried fr u whether i hd adhd n u were so kind and helpful and even phoned me. I saw a psychiatrist and he said i hv panic disorder agorophobia n ocd so at least now after 3decades i hv a answer n cn work fr ther. Thx so much n god bless u”.

Her words were spot on; now that she had an accurate and useful description of her liquorice allsorts she still had to live each day meeting the demands of life with who she was and with the resources she had; but now she knew, she had a starting point to work from. For her there was no grief to work through, the news the psychiatrist gave her was a relief, an unburdening. So now she knows more about her nature, neurology and personality, her liquorice allsorts. In disease model terms; panic disorder, agoraphobia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Anxiety in various forms is central to her nature, her being. So what can she do, what can she not do, what can change, what cannot change. If this is her liquorice allsorts how does she have to live her life?

What I came to realise is that even with medication and the stabilisation that it can bring, with science so usefully addressing the minimal conditions of existence...…..a person still has to live their life facing the challenges of life being the person they are and using the resources they have at their disposal day by day. People, each particular, trying to cope with the tasks and demands of the world; it is the understanding of this that is the domain of therapeutic psychology.

Then there was the Welfare Committee meeting. There was an argument, sometimes quite passionate about who should be allowed, or specifically who qualified to

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receive counselling and other psycho-social interventions from the school. The two positions were; one, only kids of the right faith should receive these service and two all kids of the school irrespective of faith should receive these services. My response as a counsellor was to explain that when I looked at the kids in the school I did not see persons of different faiths or persuasions, those who belonged and those who didn’t…I only saw children, children who needed our help and support.

without delay; place him in a safe and monitored context where he could receive sedation and others meds and be protected from his self-destructive determination.

So I recommended that T be placed in a community service context specifically at NICRO which required him to work with The type of therapeutic intervention that a person might need depends on the degree of ability to tolerate distress and the degree of permeability between that which is conscious and that which is unconscious to awareness.



So in relation to ways of intervening in the world including psychology I am not advocating any particular practice or idea.

Whatever practice is chosen should be useful to the person in that it increase the opportunity to live in the world with as many resources available as possible. The key is the frame or perspective one has when one sees people in the world simply trying to live in the human condition.

 

So when I look at people what I see are human beings trying to understand who they are, trying to make sense of their lives, trying to cope with the tasks and demands of the world, trying to live with dignity, striving for the same things as everybody else. I do not confuse the things that people do or the things that people have, work roles power money or status with who they are.

When I look at the world I see challenges When I look at psychology I do not see pathology, abnormality, disease I see the opportunity and the imperative to accurately and compassionately describe in uncluttered clinical terms the nature of a person’s being; their liquorice allsorts.

Take a look at this debate; is Depression a Disease? http://www.szasz.com/isdepressionadiseasetr anscript.html I still had to decide which technique to use even though I was completely comfortable with the way I was seeing the person and their life. What helped me in this regard was working at the school. So much of what we did was crisis management. I came to understand the continuum of coping capacity as a very useful tool of assessment. Here are two examples. Each story started with children being sent to the Principals office for management of behaviour.

So I recommended that after getting parental permission we place R in a car and take him to a psychiatric care unit and have him admitted

• To describe the nature & challenges of human existence and of being human • What do we have as resources to live & meet these challenges? As opposed to looking for pathology. (Context, demand, coping) • To consciously understand human intentionality, what kind of world do we want?

Carl Jung spoke of the notion of normal suffering. Normal suffering Yada yada yada…so much talk…so what do I see?

“IT'S NOT WHAT YOU LOOK AT THAT MATTERS, IT'S WHAT YOU SEE” H.D.Thoreau I did my honours degree at Rhodes in Grahamstown. The psychology department was well known for its dominant theoretical orientation, phenomenology. I struggled through my undergraduate psychology years at the other varsity feeling no connection at all to the words I was hearing in lectures.

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Then I got to Rhodes and found the connection that I had been seeking. I had found a human psychology.

Up until that point people actually living their lives seemed to be almost extraneous to the discipline of psychology, the science of human behaviour.

At Rhodes, Robert Romanyshyn a visiting lecturer gave a series of lectures on phenomenological psychology. http://robertromanyshyn.com/index.html Amongst many other things this is what he said about science and specifically about human experience.

1. By its nature science forces a split between what we experience and how we experience; it demands that we distance ourselves from our experiences.

2. Science demands that we forget the body as we live it.

3. The thinking eye replaces the experiencing eye. Things become suddenly deceptive.

4. Science demands an increasing withdrawal of the human body from the world.

Science exemplifies the axiomatic determination characterised as a ‘refusal of things as they are given’; the narrowing of one’s focus.

I see this most notably with medical specialists. There area of focus is very narrow, they possess a remarkable knowledge of their part of the human being but suddenly stop dead in their tracks, have no words if the discourse deviates form their specialised domain.

Science is the pinnacle of attempts to standardize and classify the world into separate, discreet, encapsulated bits of so called objective reality. And here’s the most important part; “science as a perspective is a psychological vision, inseparable from a ‘physics of nature and a physiology of the

body’…..modern science addresses the minimal conditions of existence”.

Why is it that Kenny is in ecstasy and at one with his being when he listens to classical music? His sadness and grief do not exist when he pours himself into his beloved music, only beauty and truth exist. Kenny the mathematician who teaches maths for a living.

Because when science that dynamo of knowledge and learning uncovers the minimal conditions of existence, these, are simply not enough for the challenge of being a human being. So the breath-taking work they are doing to find the Higgs boson in the hope that the building blocks of the universe will be uncovered is truly reflective of human genius, creativity and determination. Nonetheless, each of the scientists, the human beings involved in this reality altering quest still have to live their lives day by day meeting the demands, vicissitudes and vagaries of life as best they can with the resources they possess.

I remember when I first came across the DSM; the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the ICD -10. Wow I thought what else does one need to do this job, the ultimate universally shared definitive classification of mental disorders.

I’m just kidding! I found it appalling. We used to joke around with the DSM giving each other quick instant arithmetical diagnoses by numbers. “You’re a 296.23 with an Axis II V71.09305.00”.

Now some of you may be aware that there is a permanent polemic possibly a battle between those who advocate empirically supported psychotherapeutic treatments and those who rely on interventions that are more based on insight and transferential dynamics where emotions and desires originally associated with one person, such as a parent

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or sibling, are unconsciously shifted to another person in present time.

The “EST scientist psychologists” maintain that;  clinical psychologists are scientists  psychotherapy is based on scientific theory  science demands empirical validation of theory  Therefore no form of psychotherapy that is not supported by empirical “proof” of its effectiveness should be countenanced. http://www.academyprojects.org/est.htm I am reminded of the statement by Otto Rank; The inner lives I remember being at Ingutsheni hospital in Bulawayo and visiting the male long-term chronic ward. It was a sad place. The men were dressed in khaki shorts and shirts some with shoes and some not. Most were walking around often talking intensely to themselves sometimes directing their words at someone else and some were simply lying on the red stoep that surrounded the building located far off in the sprawling bush of the fenced hospital complex As I walked around looking at these poor souls knowing the definition of a long-term chronic facility I felt only devastation for the human lives that had been reduced to this basic quality of life; because it was life no matter how bleak, it was still life.

To my shock I came across a fellow who had been in the acute ward of Pari just a few weeks before. We had both attended the same school and had shared some stories about our common past. Now here he was lying on the stoep quietly whispering to himself his eyes pointed towards the heavens, unblinking. I put my hand on his

shoulder but he was not present in any form that allowed any connection to anything outside of his incarcerated torment.

So yes here was a classic example of a 295.2 and yes he was receiving the relevant medication that a 295.2 should get for a diagnosis of Schizophrenia, Catatonic Type. I do not dispute that or even question it.

When I first started my internship at the hospital the registrar psychiatrist taunted me with the question he always asked green young idealistic psychologists of which I was one.

“How long would you need to bring this patient out of his psychosis?”

I replied confidently that I would need only 10 months.

“I will have him back to reality and health in 10 days with medication”.

So being the irreverent person that I am, I proceeded to ask him if that was so how he understood the need for and the role of the psychologist in the psychiatric hospital.

This is what he told me.

“The psychologist is someone we refer to when we require tests, like an IQ test. It’s exactly the same as sending a stool specimen to the laboratory to confirm or exclude bilharzia”.

At that stage I was at a point where I still knew more or less how to shut my mouth, bite my tongue. I grunted turning away from his supercilious grinning face and went to my next appointment; an IQ test of a young school girl.

Today I have no qualms about medication. I have watched too much unnecessary suffering in the lives of people to hold on to the toxic psychiatry lobby.

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11

Some years ago I received a phone call from a woman who wanted my help. She was concerned that she might have ADHD and had reached a point in her life as a person, a mother and a wife where she decided that enough was enough. I listened to her and encouraged her to consult with a psychiatrist which she chose to do. Some weeks later I received this sms/text from her.

“Hi ther. Id like to thank u fr u help n encouragement as i queried fr u whether i hd adhd n u were so kind and helpful and even phoned me. I saw a psychiatrist and he said i hv panic disorder agorophobia n ocd so at least now after 3decades i hv a answer n cn work fr ther. Thx so much n god bless u”.

Her words were spot on; now that she had a name for her liquorice allsorts she still had to live each day meeting the demands of life with the resources she had; now she knew she could work from there.

What I came to realise is that even with medication and the stabilisation that it can bring, the person still has to live their life facing the challenges of life using the resources they have at their disposal.

THAT TO ME IS THE DOMAIN OF THE PSYCHOLOGIST. On a tangent I wish to express the firm conviction based on my experience in the field that psychiatry should be a subspeciality of neurology. Many psychiatrists I know simply diagnose and administer medication which is great, but what a waste of a medical degree which could be used so much more usefully to help people. So I believe that a neurologist could easily include in the practice the sub-speciality of psychiatry. I do not say this to generate conflict, I truly believe it.

If on the other hand a psychiatrist wants to practice psychology, therapy, then train as a psychologist and refer to the neurologist for diagnosis and medication. There was even a time a while back in South Africa when consideration was being given to license clinical psychologist to dispense psychoactive medication. I would need to think about that…

Then there was the Welfare Committee meeting.  To describe the nature & challenges of human existence and of being human  What do we have as resources to live & meet these challenges? As opposed to looking for pathology. (Context, demand, coping)  To consciously understand human intentionality, what kind of world do we want?

Carl Jung spoke of the notion of normal suffering. Normal suffering

WHO AM I? If you are a person Know yourself, don’t lose yourself, love being yourself When discussing people, their lives and how people live their lives the word authentic is sometimes bandied about. It is noted that the antonym of the word authentic is the word fake; not the real thing.

Why should there be any discussion about not losing ourselves, loving ourselves, let alone about knowing who we are? I know who I am as all people know who they are; the issue strikes one as pointlessly machinated,

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definitely superfluous and probably mischievous.

Well it may just be the parochial nature of my profession but there are many instances where people have told me that they feel as if they don’t know who they are, have lost touch with a sense of who they are as if they have left home unwittingly, in its extreme rendition a feeling that one has been dead for a long time and of course the sadly pervasive problem of feeling negative about oneself.

It is clear that people are capable of the most remarkable adaptations to reality; the capacity to get used to both internal and external realities whatever their nature.

In Hebrew there is a verb; lehitragel ( ) meaning to get used to. Now whilst it is definitely an important aspect of survival and natural selection that we each have the capacity to adapt which is distinct from getting used to… there are certain instances and times when it is clearly ill advised to get used to.



Constant consumer advertising bombarding us with powerful messages telling us who we should be as opposed to who we are.  Repeated school failure where learning problems have gone undetected.  Abuse and bullying in any form.  Lack of adequate emotional nurturing by parents  Retrenchment, retirement.

Look at your own life to register times when your knowing, not losing and loving yourself were damaged or tested.

The best example of someone knowing themselves, not losing themselves and loving themselves (and others) happened in the counselling part of my job at school. This young person reached a point where she stopped inflicting pain on herself and chose to simply refuse to get used to. This refusal along with her desire to be who she was, live the life that was hers elicited courage, determination, fortitude and responsibility way beyond her years. No child should have to face the situation she was facing.

I cannot do justice to her story here but in brief her mother had ceased to be a functional parent as a result of long-term psychiatric illness.

Not necessarily knowing where the path was taking her but with a resolute choice to follow the path the child worked with me and others to have the parental situation investigated by relevant authorities. After due legal process the child and sibling were removed from the parent, painful as that might have been or sounds, her actions saved lives. She is someone I love and respect deeply.

There are endless ways presented in our lives that tempt us to not know, lose and not love ourselves; a few examples.

COPING How much can a person tolerate?

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I had a psychology lecturer who taught abnormal psychology. We were sitting in the lecture theatre waiting for him to start talking. Without a word he picked up a piece of chalk, strode to the green board and wrote the word therapist in large letters. He looked back at us, still not speaking and quietly said “the therapist can sometimes become the…. “ … He turned back to the board and inserted a forward slash between the third and fourth letters of the word he had scribed. “…rapist”.

He knew something about the power of experiential learning. That was thirty-one years ago. If you ask me what else he taught us in terms of abnormal psychology I could not tell you, but the word-on- the-boardmoment has never left me. Now to be honest I cannot remember exactly how he explained why he did what he did; I think it had something to do with the reality that therapy is about power, how it is used, how it is abused, who has it, who wants it, who gives it away, who gets it…and that includes the therapist...who is fully human too and is not always aware of his or her own motivation.

Therapists should be in their own therapy in addition to being in supervision.

So with the board-moment in mind, the question I want to ask is this; how much can a person tolerate?

Can a child tolerate being told by his teacher that he is lazy? Can a battle hardened soldier tolerate death, violence and human destruction without being traumatised or having it erode away at his soul? Can a teenager tolerate the anxiety of knowing he is not loved by his father? Can a person tolerate seeing another human being who is somebody’s child living in conditions of deprivation, degradation and poverty? Can a person tolerate being told that they are not facing feelings that have been buried away?

Can a person tolerate being told that they must stop finding blame in other places and

they alone are responsible for their lives and that they alone are the obstacle to change?

It is the nature of being human that we are vulnerable and it is the nature of life to present challenges to our vulnerability.

There are three things that differentiate us from the other species; they are in no particular order emotion, emotion and emotion and of course consciousness (awareness of emotion amongst other things).

Knowing this to be true the word courage becomes so very important. When I was doing my internship I had to present a seminar paper as part of my placement. In the essay I spoke of love, respect and courage being critical to the success of psychotherapeutic interventions, specifically I remember saying, “at the end of the day isn’t therapy about love, isn’t the work we do about love and doesn’t the client feel and know that?”

The head of the assessment team listening to my presentation pointed his finger up, moved it back and forth close to his cheek and while looking down at the ground pensively said; “you are attributing therapeutic efficacy to non-specific factors”. I felt as if I had spat at the Queen herself.

By non-specific factors the good doctor was pointing out that I was referring to variables not posited as being active causes of change in therapeutic theory; in this case psychiatry.

He also meant that non-specific factors could not be defined, measured and quantified with the requisite scientific precision so as to be a reliable and valid variable in the determining of therapeutic change. I mean c’mon…love, courage, cheesecake, chicken soup?

I was suitably intimidated. But he was right in his observation, that is exactly what I was doing. Technique transpires in a relationship, a specific kind of relationship but still a relationship; technique - relationship, relationship – technique; like encouraging a

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client to have courage to start to see things differently, re-framing their beliefs We naturally protect ourselves from the threat of pain and emotional conflict; we attempt to prevent our vulnerability from being threatened. This protection takes the form of psychological and cognitive mechanisms of defence. These defences range from being in awareness to being out of everyday conscious awareness. Forgetting is a powerful defence; re-membering can be a powerful healing.

The defences that we utilise (those in conscious awareness and those not in conscious awareness) may be quite simple, like simply denying something that you probably know is true. They may also be quite complex, entrenched and hard to recognise without help, if such help is desired.

Should defences be tampered with?

Any therapy, behavioural, cognitive behavioural (CBT), depth & psychodynamic is going to demand change in behaviour and/or beliefs and/or emotions. The capacity to tolerate the processes that create change rests on four things; a person freely choosing to embark on the attempt to change, who is genuinely motivated to change (notwithstanding the often unconscious resistance to this very change), who possesses sufficient ego strengths and resources (resilience of the psyche) to tolerate such a process and possesses a part of their psyche that is able to form an alliance with the therapist to do the work on themselves.

Defences are adaptive and protective. There are limits to the amount of pain and emotional threat that a person can tolerate.

Sometimes if the adaptive nature of the defences is functional; i.e. allows for a reasonable quality of life free of dissonance (ego-syntonic), distress or disturbance and the person clearly will not tolerate either the identification of the defences, the breaching

of the defences let alone exposure to the feelings and anxieties that the defences are keeping sealed, it can be better to leave those defences alone.

Why am I going on about this stuff?

Psychological change is often spoken about in what I consider to be glib terms. If change is so straightforward; change your beliefs, choose to be positive, yada yada yada! Why for goodness sake do people simply not identify the “problem” and just choose to change? Replace the redundant software with new software, install a new OS; ice cream sandwich cerebellum 4.1, mountain lion amygdala v10!

We feel the threat of pain, we have emotions, we have feelings that are not simple to identify, experience, understand and accept, we are not just rational thinkers; I think therefore I am; I feel therefore I am is equally true.

I also want to highlight a few specific areas that I have concerns about.

1. Commercial mass change techniques.

High intensity, emotionally charged, short duration, large heterogeneous groups, command instruction techniques, public shared declarations and disclosures, rigid controlling rule structure allowing no deviation and pre-determined outcomes, the use of public shaming techniques. This can sometimes mean that the apparent change is just the immediately felt intense emotional experience of hope, shared common connection with others and the pushing of a strong (often generally common sense) idea.

2. Popular books, CD’s DVD’s on selfchange. Proclaiming and insisting on the power and effectiveness of formulas, beliefs, techniques, secrets, rituals and other things to help one change, become unburdened free and successful and other desired things that lots of us want.

3. The often asserted proclamation that you (each of us) alone are responsible, you

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alone are the obstacle. We are told that all we have to do is choose, simply decide to change our negative beliefs, just like that here and now. This ignores or fails to recognise the complexity of the person's psychic integrity, the role of determining factors some not in awareness, the role, function and adaptive benefits of defence mechanisms, the absence of assessment and understanding of the person’s ego-strength and resilience resources and the ignoring of specific stages and states. Psychic changes that occur in a sudden, intensely emotional way in a staged group setting are difficult to sustain in that they are not the product of a worked through process of awareness, understanding and adaptation to the new. Often such changes can only be sustained by forcibly shutting out or excluding competing or unwanted thoughts and feelings. Sometimes we are too young to cope with certain feelings Sometimes we are too compromised (health & mind) to cope with certain feelings even if we claim to want change.

Thus some of these things do not start with who and what the person actually is. The strongly proclaimed content often belies a strong need on the author’s/facilitator’s/organisation’s part to be right to have the truth and power and thus the respect of lots of people, to fill a need within them, an unacknowledged motivation.

They choose to tell people the readers that they have never met and do not know who they are and what they should do, think, feel and be in their lives. They often tell the story, moving as it may be, of one person and the interpretation of their experience which nonetheless usually involves a real struggle with personal pain truth and clarity. They do not sufficiently attempt to differentiate their experiences in relation to the other. They practice intense techniques without knowing the actual intentionality and understanding

the capacities of the person even if the person is given warning of the risks up front.

They can be risky because they overlook the need to address the following. · Do I adequately know and understand this person? · Do I know the nature of their feelings about themselves and others, heir emotional history and landscape? · Do I understand this person’s resilience capacity? · Do I know what this person needs in terms of safety and support with respect to change?

Put simply there is no working mutually respectful and supportive relationship.

If these questions are not answered; and they can only be answered on the basis of a real relationship, the helping risks being the manipulation of power over another.

So when it comes to personal growth, change, healing, be clear about what you want and how far you can willingly choose to go. What do you want and what does each process require of you? · Information · Skills · Understanding · Growth · Healing · Transformation Each is different each offers and requires different things.

The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm, http://www.karnacbooks.com/Sear ch.asp?Keywords=the+art+of+loving&Sear chCategory=0&SearchType=2&btnSearch.x =62&btnSearch.y=11 A Look at Four Psychology Fads, Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov /15/health/la-he-psychology-fads-20101115 Change We Can (Almost) Believe in, Time Magazine

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US,http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar ticle/0,9171,2055188-2,00.html Specific vs Non-specific Factors in Psychotherapy, http://archpsyc.amaassn.org/cgi/content/abstract/36/10/1125 Beyond the “Psychological Placebo”: Specifying the Non-specific in Psychotherapy,http://onlinelibrary.wiley.co m/doi/10.1111/j.14682850.2011.01242.x/abstract The Role of Non-specific Factors in CognitiveBehavior Therapy for Depression,http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d oi/10.1111/j.14682850.1994.tb00016.x/abstract The Role of Non-specific Factors in Treatment Outcome of Psychotherapy Studies,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubm ed/11794553 Shame on You! Do You Use Shame to Control Others?http://www.psychologytoday.com/ blog/test-case/201106/shame-you-do-youuse-shame-control-others

LIVING DAY BY DAY 96, 97, 98, 99, 100…READY OR NOT, I’M COMING…..OUT! I have two friends (one is no longer; my friend, that is; what a terrible waste!) who chose to tell me (separately) that they were gay. It was the first time each of them had disclosed this hitherto unrevealed fact to anyone. From the look on their faces I sensed that there was anxiety as to what my reaction would be. They waited worriedly for my response; beads of sweat growing larger on their furrowed brows, lips pursed together, breath held silently. “Congratulations”, I said.

Last night I met a long-time friend for halfprice sushi. We were chatting over salmon sashimi with fiery wasabi and I sensed that he was summoning the courage to tell me something. He looked to his left, then to his right, and then he uttered the words. From

the look on his face I sensed that there was anxiety as to what my reaction would be. He waited worriedly for my response; beads of sweat growing larger on his furrowed brow (anxiety or wasabi?), lips pursed together, breath held silently. “I love singing opera”, he told me. “Congratulations”, I said, actually I said, “how wonderful, like music to my ears!”

Some would argue that I am being flippant by daring to suggest that these two comings out are equivalent. Yes, there are real and dangerous external constraints; being lesbian in South African black townships has cost women their lives and still does. I have seen people for whom coming out as homosexual was actually quite straightforward, easy, painless and happened at a relatively young age. I have also known some people to contemplate suicide in part because they could not tolerate or allow parts of themselves to emerge or be seen in the light of day, and in these particular instances it had nothing to do with being gay. Having said this I accept that some comings out are riskier and carry with them much higher stakes than other comings out.

I see coming out as the recognition that there are attributes, any attributes, within us that want to be seen, want to live, but for a variety of reasons are unable or are not allowed to emerge into the light of day or to be integrated as a regular part of a person’s life.

It is possible to exist without these things emerging but one might come to sense that the quality or richness of one’s life is perhaps not quite what it could be without this particular attribute or set of attributes. The thing is that these attributes if not allowed to emerge will not really go away. They may change character or shift their energy in another direction but will not really disappear. I suppose we can shape ourselves into a desired package to some extent, but to

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imagine that we can reject parts of ourselves invites trouble. When I think of this I see an image of a heavy water filled balloon and somebody trying to hold it still or shape it in some desired way; futile unless you put it into a box; but then the joy and mischief of being a water filled balloon is gone.

In many cases the term coming out is not relevant and would not be the most useful way to describe what is happening. Lots of people are lucky enough in that the things that they are/ have within them naturally emerge and manifest in the world, in the light of day, as part of the process of growing and maturing. Perhaps external circumstances in the lives of such people were intimate, supportive, and welcoming, as opposed to threatening, judgemental and distant. The internal resources we each possess to cope with challenges, such as seeing, accepting and manifesting parts of ourselves in the world, vary widely. For some people recognising accepting and manifesting parts of ourselves is very difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible.

I like ordinary things. I like ordinary courage. I sometimes feel concerned when I see the emphasis and value placed on unusual courage; the man who has no body from his waist down who scaled Kilimanjaro using his hands, and the young guy with no arms who wrestles for his school team. I wish in no way to diminish or trivialise the real courage and fortitude of spirit involved in such endeavours. I also realise that the world offers us few genuine heroes to serve as role models, to inspire; people who do courageous and valuable things whether they are being seen or not, people with principles that stand for human dignity and human rights without hatred and violence. Mandela, Aung San Suu

Kyi; can you name any other living person of this heroic magnitude? I certainly hope so.

The thing is, I believe that just to live in this world takes courage, whoever you are. Does it not take courage, every day to be a person, a parent, a single parent, a child, a teenager, an old person, a provider? Does it not take courage to face each day, to try ones best, to engage with life’s demands, to be honest, to take responsibility despite the obstacles in one’s life? This courage is seldom recognised let alone acknowledged and valued. It takes courage not simply to live each day as best we can but simultaneously to bravely risk allowing one’s true being and nature to emerge in the world.

Can we distinguish the process of coming out from what happens in psychotherapy? We must, simply because the huge, vast majority of people do not use or have access to psychotherapy in their lives. It is true that by definition psychotherapy aims to make parts of our being manifest in the world as part of the process of change and integration, but in the main people either do this themselves, emerge, with difficulty or with ease, directly or indirectly or they do not do it at all.

If we try to break down the notion of coming out we might discern a number of elements.

Knowledge of the things There are things within us that are not out there living in the world; small things and/or huge things.

We either are aware of these things or we are not. Sometimes the awareness of these things manifests itself opaquely, in anxiety, depression, illness, dissatisfaction, disconnection, underachievement, acting out.

Sometimes other people either know what the thing is that is not out there or tell us that they see us troubled, unhappy, unfulfilled etc.

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Reasons for non-emergence of the things People know and accept who they are in varying degrees. People receive positive mirroring and reflections of themselves and validating support in varying degrees, sometimes none. People possess different degrees of resilience and emotional strength.

People may be aware of the things but refuse to accept them or allow them to emerge and choose to live like that.

Possible effects of non-emergence I came to believe that my life was over, nothing further for me.

I stopped being creative, turned my back on my art.

I felt dead inside and thought that was normal.

I felt resentment and jealousy.

Effects of emergence Less energy wasted on keeping things at bay More energy to live life.

More freedom to make choices.

Hopefully less hidden seepage or harmful acting out.

More connected to oneself.

I do not equate coming out with transcendence or self-actualization. Such fantastic notions do not do justice to or describe in any useful way the ordinariness and difficulty of coming out. I am idealistic; ask those who have crossed swords with me; but idealism based on real life and real living and real people.

Let me briefly illustrate some comings out from my experience with people.

I had to realise accept and manifest the fact that I am an (the) alpha male. I was in business with another male friend. I became depressed and didn’t understand why; I don’t

get depressed. I needed psychotherapy to help get to it. I have to be in charge for better or for worse. I started my own business; I am the alpha male; if you’re male don’t mess with me…I’m out big boy! Some will like this and some won’t…tough.

I have the power to be aggressive; this was no secret to me. I didn’t let it be seen as I was terrified of this threatening force inside of me. I thought that if I ever allowed it to emerge someone would get hurt; someone other than me. Life, exacting master that it is, pried it out of me like an oyster refusing to yield its coveted pearl. I discovered that I can harness its immense power; this is as far as you can go with me my friend. It was hardest for those who knew me as accommodating and forgiving, the one always swallowing their endless dumping of shit; “you’ve changed...you used to be caring.” What they really meant was I can no longer feel good at your expense…you are no longer someone I can push around or emotionally manipulate…how could you deprive me of that?

I love working as a clay potter; I am closest to myself when clay sploshes through my fingers. Oh yes I dabbled; a bowl here a mug there, but I was just a tourist. I was told and I came to believe that being an academic was what was real, important and of worth. So I spent years being a scientist concerned about one single species of bird, a universally acclaimed authority cut off from my squelchy messy joy, slowly shrivelling up and losing heart; but they called me doctor! We emigrated and I found myself centred on my clay work by dint of circumstance and they say emigration is hard! I have recently won acclaim from my peers in a potter’s exhibition, it’s not a PhD, but it goes to the heart of my soul not just a bird in my brain. To

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think that bliss could be so simple, messy, and squidgy.

I am a woman and I have found myself loving other women; it feels so much more genuine than the endless contrived chore of pretending to love men. My father’s home was brutally female loathing. Endless guffaws of laughter at the ridiculous notion that respect might be due to a woman. There is no such thing as a lesbian in my father’s culture, only in other people’s morally depraved cultures. It came to me late in my life, a loved one saw what I was feeling, rather, doing with other woman; flirting, seeking connection, being emotionally available without unspoken passive aggression. If I had allowed myself to feel it before I would have had to face the rage I feel towards my father and then take responsibility for my own life choices without resorting to blaming others.

Without realising it I buried my sexual (and life) passion deeply and started to believe that I had no sexual desire, no libido. I am open, new and filled with passion.

I love to sing opera in front of an audience; blow me over, who would have imagined it! I have spent so long probing why I was such a mess as a person that eventually I forgot to recognise that there is a person here, let alone a person of worth and interest. I agonised for years; hell bent on scrutinising what was wrong with me, why was I not normal? What chance was there for anything of value and beauty in me to feel safe enough to steal a glance over the lip of the selfloathing cesspool? On my travels I found myself in the land of Verdi and Parmigiano.

I’m not saying fate brought me to this point, but there I was whatever the cosmic route. I stood up walked in front of the group of opera lovers, gave a small bow, and freed my breath to sing, I felt what I had never felt before….one with myself.

I wanted to write. It’s just rubbish I would say.

Who would want to read this drivel?

Whatever I write I see as rubbish. Saying that I am astonished when I read my work years later; with the passage of time somehow the devil of self-contempt is caught off guard. My coming out was slow, arduous and profoundly burdensome. I had to fight for every word on every line on the screen as if my very life and the life of my children depended on it.

So let me be plain, coming out is just life, if we choose and are able. There is no way to successfully bypass the living of life with all its demands no matter what is in you or has come out of you.

If you have allowed your attributes to come out you will still have to live your life day to day.

Having said that, after my friend yielded to his love of singing opera I observed that he was feeling differently. This is what I mean by a miracle, believing that something is one thing and then it becomes something else unexpectedly. I immediately saw him differently and I felt that he saw himself differently. It was a miracle, where the thing that occurred ran contrary to the firm expected conviction of what was and what was not possible in one’s life.

So we decide and are able to come out because we no longer feel any worth in pretending… we believe that we will survive the emergence and manifestation. We say to the world....here it is, but who are we talking to? More often than not we are talking to ourselves; those ourselves that have become internalised voices from people, rules, admonitions, reprimands, tellings-off, dire

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threats, criticisms, emotional blackmail, absences of love and support, trauma… that we have experienced in our lives.

Is that all? Sounds so easy. Not always.

EDUCATION Things that are important. .

So I worked as a school counsellor for nearly twenty years in a community school. As a child I hated being at school, school was a disaster for me; so why was I back at school for my career?

Over the course of my working life the thing that has had the most powerful and lasting impact on me was the initiation and development of the (special needs) inclusive education programme at the school in 1996.

It started out as a fairly straightforward task to accommodate four “special needs” kids who were not at the school but whose parents and they believed that they should be at the community school. The thing is that these kids had “learning and other difficulties” and this was the reason why they were not at a “normal school” but rather at a “special school” designed to meet their specific needs.

My work started with a plan to accommodate children with special needs in a normal regular school. Our commitment to the “included kids” was complete. Because of this dedication our perspective on what we were actually doing changed quickly and comprehensively. Soon we realised that all learners; those who had always been there, so called special needs kids, kids with behavioural or emotional problems, kids gifted in aptitude and application, all benefited by being identified and allocated

relevant support in a structured and policy informed manner from the start of school to the end of school...and perhaps even life after school?! Outrageous!

Our efforts and realisations brought us to the basic truth. Our job as educators was to manage mixed ability classes. A fact that had always been true and was true now, this time it was seen clearly and honestly.

My work thus ended with a model that recognised the real meaning and whole school value of inclusive education; inclusive communities, the building blocks of a supportive, humanistic democracy where value and success for all is understood and defended in concept, policy and structure.

This is what we came to know as the truth.

Children need belonging that is naturally achieved through normal socialisation with each other rather than to be separated (in myriad ways) from each other.

All human beings possess weaknesses, strengths diverse abilities, life contexts and conditions; none of these should be hidden from the light of day. The hegemony of normal over abnormal, winners over losers is a psycho- sociological power construct.

Thus, in any group or community of any nature there will be a variety of variations of weaknesses, strengths, abilities, life contexts and conditions.

Schools are by nature specifically goal oriented and possess little capacity to take or offer alternative paths and often fail to understand the specific demands of their fixed context and how this impacts on each person’s capacity to meet the demands of the context according to their unique human variation.

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http://www.isec2010.org/Default.aspx The natural conclusion is thus that in any given school population (community, family) a percentage of children (people) will require some form of support in order to navigate the demands of school (life) in respect of normative exit goals or to have a relevant, meaningful and flexible alternative educational experience suited to their unique developmental needs that provides for capacity, autonomy and independence in society in some cases with post-school ongoing support.

In order to avoid the failure of intended policies inclusive schools must be set up to identify, provide and manage the cases requiring learner support and to support the teachers teaching mixed ability classes.

Teachers will naturally realise that they are teaching to mixed ability classes, communities, will gather and also be provided with information about learners, conditions , which will facilitate the creation of more symmetrical power relationships and will with support structure their teaching accordingly valuing the needs and development of all learners, seeing ...what he or she can become - Martin Buber.

The rest is practical and technical detail in ongoing partnerships with school, parents and community resources; the how of each separate case. This model should by nature be fairly invisible, simply a natural and

This project, inclusion, made me understand so many things that had not been perfectly clear to me before, as long as you are committed to the success of all children, I mean all, it is just common sense!

PLAYTIME! The cast of characters If this exercise feels uncomfortable or makes you feel unsafe…don’t do it, it’s not that important….no problem.

1. Who are the cast in your drama?

Let’s pretend that your life is a dramatic play.

List the cast of characters, of course there is you (the person reading this) as well! Try and list each and every cast member from the most obvious to the most obscure and subtle, from the strongest most dominant to the weakest most quiet and submissive, from the oldest to the youngest.

It might be useful to record your observations which may arise at any moment in any place, so have a pencil and small notepad handy.

2. What can be said about the cast?

Describe what they are like, how they feel, what they believe, their relationship to you and to others, do they have names?

Do they have a gender, an age, a story of their own, how did they get here, where are they from, what do they like/dislike? What do they find easy and find hard to do or feel?

What is their way of being in the world? What is their aim or purpose in the drama? Are there certain cast characters that appear completely uninvited?

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Describe the scenes they usually decide to appear in. Are there some cast members that you feel are in the play but whom you cannot identify? How do the cast characters get on with each other?

Which cast characters are helpful to you and which make your life harder at times? How? Notes Imagine you are a person sitting in the audience watching a play taking note of the cast without judgement, just observing neutrally.

Don’t rush, take your time...live it ...as you live your life...they will emerge.

you are so arrogant to imagine that you can do this’, fastidiously fault-finding every step of the way. It feels like I am Sisyphus the poor dolt king condemned to push a rock up the hill. I am determined to get up the hill / do the plastering but this damn rock is going to accompany me all the way. So instead of just doing the work, enjoying the climb, I am distracted by the weight of disparaging burdens making the doing, the living doubly hard, sapping my energy eroding my confidence. But as Camus himself said;” the Myth of Sisyphus… sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert”.

STORIES

Perhaps do it at the end of your day when you have time to remember and reflect.

Ask someone you love and trust and who loves knows and accepts you to look at the “cast” list. If you want ask them what they think.

Martin tells the following story.

“I was walking round the house checking some of the exterior walls. In two places some of the plaster had begun to crack and in other places the plaster was crumbling leaving some areas of brick exposed. I decided to chip away all the plaster around these areas and then attempt to re-plaster the walls myself. I have always known that I possess something or someone inside of me whose sole purpose in life is to thrive on fear. This “cast member” manifests its fear by an endless and unyielding stream of pessimistic criticism. But as if to remind me of the pernicious nature of this element, lest I forget, this unrelenting and unforgiving voice was with me every step of the way as I proceeded to plaster the walls.

It felt like there was someone standing over my shoulder commenting on everything I did; ‘you have no idea what you are doing, you are going to fuck it up even more than it already is,

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer My name is Sophie. I am in my fifties; I am married and have three children; two girls and one boy. I am a good mother. I know and love my children. I trust them and give them time and space to learn from experience, to make their own choices about their lives. I support them consciously and actively. I’m a good parent, despite the fact that I did not receive good parenting. I had to learn to be a good parent starting with learning how to be a good parent to myself.

For as long as I can remember my life has been on hold. How to describe it? I am standing outside the theatre but I don’t go in to hear the opera. I’m at the entrance to the Louvre but I don’t go in to see Mona Lisa. I am at a banquet, a feast with all of my favourite delicacies, foods, and especially puddings laid out on a long table, but I am not eating. At least that’s what it feels like; in fact that’s what it is. I tell myself that all is well; I am biding my time, looking after my children takes precedence. I know what I am doing. I

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have learnt to be strong, comfortable in my solitude; aren’t we all alone really? That’s what being an adult is, is it not? My friends, the ones I can talk to honestly, keep trying to get me to see what I am doing, depriving myself, sacrificing my élan vital, being a stalwart member of the martyr tribe. Oh well each to their own.

in when she did this. It felt as if something was going to disappear, something that was already vaguely and barely present to start with; it felt like I was going to simply dissipate, vanish into the warm enveloping sun. My capitulation was closing in fast. In a daze some words I had written bobbed around in my head.

I’ve been caring for my elderly mother for some time now. Her health has declined rapidly and recently she hurt herself in an accident and struggles to meet her daily needs. In truth she has always struggled to meet her needs; or has tried to meet her needs in ways that have been quite destructive for others; like me for instance. I know why she was the way she was or so I have come to realise over time. Her mother was unable to show love for my mother.

The voice silent for most of its life Is close to its demise; A slow, timid whispering temerity That will simply vanish with no sound no breath.

It won't put up a fight, It knows that the experiment has failed And that general annoyance prevails.

Isn’t it a spectacular irony; I am now looking after my mother in ways that she never looked after me. Isn’t reality baffling?!

Anyway the story, I was home with my family, I was 18 years old having just completed my schooling. It was another sumptuous day, the sun was warm and enveloping, and the defecation was about to begin, again.

I had been talking about my hopes for the immediate future, my burning desire was to go to university to study music, fine art and literature; how my spirit speaks. I had spoken for just a few moments when mother commenced her twisted tirade of infantile self-serving vitriol. I was thinking only of myself selfishly choosing to ignore and neglect mother’s needs...her situation, I was told. I came to feel that she hated me, more accurately that she detested with envy any sign of my young bourgeoning life.

I felt the sickening feeling that always flooded

Close to the precipice …. but then she arrives like she always does. Annoyance is how she starts, moves on to being pissed off, then to great balls of fire…fury! I can’t say that I am not acquainted with her because I am; she terrifies me, like a bomb dropped from a warplane, landed on the ground, but not exploded. No idea what is going to happen next and how much damage it will cause when it does detonate! She’s cracked and I can’t get rid of her. She’s dangerous, an enemy to my sanity. She’s rude, takes no crap from anyone, is cuttingly abusive, abrasively offensive, is a long distance runner…and her standard issue weapon...Fuck you…I’m outta here…don’t want your shit.

So I ran…anywhere as quickly as was humanly possible, far from her and far from my mother.

I left, went to university with a bursary I had applied for, studied music, fine art, and literature. I was far away. Graduated, got married, had kids. Far away.

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So it’s now and I am driving to check on my mother. She moved closer to me; she had no choice really. I had no choice really. As I said she had hurt herself and I was looking after her. Who else would do it? I had left my kids at home, food prepared in the fridge for them to warm up when they arrived home. I had told her the previous week about the arrangement for the insurance money that she was to receive because of her injury. I had just crossed the threshold and she started at me. She accused me of trying to rob her of her money.

My face became hot as if I had been showered with molten fire. I turned my body away from her; annoyed, then pissed off and then incandescent with fury. I ran towards my car.

In the midst of my determined running, unexpectedly and abruptly as if my body had a life of its own, I fell to my knees, dropped my face to the ground as if it was a dead weight, and yielded to the immensity of my anguish. I sank into this place with a song playing in my head; Leo Sayer from 1976 intoning the melancholic words of his single.

“When I need you I just close my eyes and I'm with you…..”

I remember just lying there on the ground in a fog. I was awake but having a dream; it was a glorious feeling, no pain, no fear, no anger just a childlike delight as the reverie wafted over me. She was there, the enemy, she; annoyance, pissed off, fury. She had a sword in her hands, clenched tightly, and held at the ready across her face. In the dream I touched her gently on her warrior countenance, slowly removed the sword from her grasp, and dropped it where we stood. She leaned towards me and rested her aching 18 year old body in my embrace.

Her work of protecting me for all those years had left her weary, confused, and lonely. For

so long I saw her as crazy, out of control, irrational, uncouth, an aberration that I disavowed, and severed; an enemy. But she had never turned her back on me. She had protected me with ferociousness like that of a grizzly bear protecting her cub from threat.

She had surrendered her life to shield me from those who sought my annihilation; always alert, no thought for herself, her needs, her desires, and her pleasures, ever.

Life outside of her purpose was of no concern to her, I knew why I existed. I had done her work well, alone unrecognised. It was time for me to surrender to just living.

I am her; it was this revelation that struck me that’s why I stopped running. It’s like a part of me decided not to actually run. Decided that I would not run. I decided that I will not run.

I - will - not - run.

It was time for me to surrender; to take what gives me life, to allow those who are broken and hateful to not touch my soul; time to grasp my needs, desires, and pleasures; fury is with me.

SIDE BAR Traditional burnout recipe (Also known as Compassion Fatigue Pie in northern climes).This recipe has been a secret for many years but is shared here for all to enjoy. Some ingredients and preparation methods may vary from chef to chef. Bon appetit! Serves many people including spouses and dependents.

Ingredients 1. 1 person aged twenty-five and above (may be male or female, any ethnic group, creed or culture), completely raw.

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2. 10 years or more experience in any of the following professions teaching/education, mental health, social work, nursing, pastoral care; in fact most professions; see caring quantities below.

3. 1 caring personality (preferably overcaring & over-involved) originally thought to be associated with specific professions but now believed that the over-caring attitude in any profession could help broil a delicious burn-out, steamed with salt.

4. 1 highly developed sense of responsibility (preferably over-developed) with as few personal boundaries as possible, peeled whole.

5. 3 cups of insatiable need to please grated (rough) with 750 ml unrefined coldpressed intense honesty.

6. ½ cup finely chopped fragrant danya or cilantro or Chinese parsley or kothmir or coriander to be sprinkled on top to hide strong scent of need for validation.....optional, no stems or roots.

7. 1 or 2 managers, supervisors or bosses slightly short of being whole men/women, missing insight into their own actions, missing a backbone or two in their spines and creatively flexible when using truth & honesty who are more than happy to see the person working so (too) hard.

8. 50 large bags (100 kg each) of job responsibility for section/division /department/team but no authority to make and enforce policy, management or staff discipline decisions. This alone will almost guarantee that the burnout pie is fried much sooner than expected especially if such allegations (no authority) are denied by the bosses who gave you the responsibility in the first place.

1. Put the person in a helping or service job that makes him or her feel good, useful, valued and needed.

2. Simmer with the lid on for five years occasionally adding more work and more responsibility.

3. Add pinches of more tasks not in the original job description as a reward for being so good at the original job.

4. Person’s manager should occasionally but consistently tell the person (preferably alone with boss’s arm hugging person’s shoulder)) how good they are for the business/institution and what an example they are of dedication, work ethic, selflessness, being the only one who sees the big picture; unlike those other employees who simply don’t have the right stuff, they say, telling each person what they want to hear.

5. Caution, remember to not add any authority to make decisions about staff, policy or discipline; just responsibility.

6. Add the insatiable need to please one cup at a time between periods of absenteeism due to unexplained illness.

7. For a well-rounded spicy taste it is recommended that any sign of overload, stress and bodily symptoms are ignored; if in doubt go with the guilt feelings.

8. Slowly fold in, do not stir, the capacity or lack thereof to learn from experience and to obdurately refute, deny and reject clear warning signs and messages from self and others, especially those who genuinely care for you. This will ensure that the centre of the compassion fatigue pie is broken into bite size pieces and crushed to perfection; this will also extend the shelf life of the burnout pie so the effects will be around for a long time, mmm yum, enjoy!

Method CLASSIFIED ADS SECTION

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Email jules@humansolutions.co.za to place an ad.

NOCTURNAL SLEEP PARTNER REQUIRED I am a gorgeous single woman seeking a longterm meaningful non-sexual relationship (only during REM sleep) with an experienced dream interpreter; male or female.

The successful applicant must be prepared to sleep next to me in my three-quarter bed.

Must be able to wake up from deep sleep at the drop of a hat, be immediately lucid and attentive, write down details of my dream, preferably in the dark and offer useful and accurate interpretations of said dreams including recurring dreams of me flying with Nigella.

The ability to softly sing me back to sleep while scratching my head gently and rhythmically would increase the chances of a successful application.

Please send full CV and letters of motivation by singing telegram to 34 Rocky Rd, Twilight Hill, 97163.

THIS IS MY QUESTION Q. SHOULD I KEEP MY FAITH? I have been struggling for some time now. It seems as if my faith is being tested. I am beginning to have doubts. Should I keep my faith?

A. I have always thought that if someone has God in their life that they are quite fortunate.

Not because I necessarily believe that this thing called God actually exists but rather that having this faith seems sometimes, from my experience to give the faithful something, a quality of life that feels different, more clear perhaps?

Having faith connotes that the person living the faith knows that the description of reality or ultimate reality they hold really exists. In truth they cannot know but they can believe it exists.

Some would argue that believing in God is an example of ‘magical thinking’. Others would say that there exists no way to prove that God exists; it is easier I think to show products of the belief in God much of which may be considered good and worthy.

Alas it is also possible to demonstrate products of the belief in God that contribute to violence, human degradation and endless killing…often in the very name of God. The National Party of South Africa; purveyors of that great social engineering experiment legislating structural persecution and inequality; apartheid, used to claim that God was on their side. The products of this faith resulted in nothing short of evil; bringing untold suffering, deprivation and indignity to millions of black citizens. Is that a faith worth keeping?

Yet what if God through his mercifulness, if he exists, gives us the gift of confidence, optimism resilience compassion and concern for our fellow human beings; surely such a faith would be worthy of keeping.

I was presenting a workshop once with a fellow professional friend of mine. She appealed to me not to describe a belief in God as magical thinking. By doing so, she believed I would be violating the faith of people for whom faith was centrally important in their lives; a faith that gave hope, succour and a

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sense of not being alone in the world. I don’t think their faith would have succumbed to that view actually.

What I am trying to say is this. It is true that what we believe has a direct link to what we do. If we believe that there is no hope we are probably going to act or fail to act in ways that will impact unhelpfully on our lives. If in having hope derived from a faith in God we act in ways that are optimistic, patient, committed and healthy for ourselves and others or if we believe that God directly gives us optimism, patience, and commitment, does it really matter if God is real or not so long as the holder of the faith believes it to be true?

Faith is a knowledge or belief in a particular reality. Sometimes the testing of faith results in a stronger faith. Sometimes the actual knowing or faith erodes away and simply one struggles to hold the faith.

So what does holding your faith do for your life? What does it make possible and what does it make not possible? What things are open and what things are closed? I tyh9inkm that ultimately faith might be about connection…does your faith pull you away from or towards connection…to yourself, others and the world?

The cautionary note is to not exploit the notion of faith in God to perpetuate immorality, violence and inhumanity. In this life, in this world each of us is answerable to each other, responsible for what we do; whether God exist or not, whether one has faith in God or not, whether there is a world to come or not, whether the human world we live in is considered temporary or ultimate reality.

Why "Magical Thinking" Works for Some People http://www.scientificamerican.com/article. cfm?id=superstitions-can-make-you

THIS ISSUE’S QUOTE

"Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard.

It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you'd rather not go". Henri Nouwen

LEGAL DISCLAIMER NATURE OF INFORMATION PROVIDED The information and writings contained in this website are for general interest only and are not intended for any other purpose.

NO PSYCHOLOGICAL OR MEDICAL ADVICE IS INTENDED OFFERED OR PROVIDED The information and writings on this website are offered with the understanding that the author and any contributing authors are not engaged in rendering any medical or psychological service, are not intended to be a substitute for therapy, offer no diagnosis or treatment of any kind; psychological, medical, spiritual, or other professional service.

If advice or counselling is needed, services of a certified professional should be sought.

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