Posted by Solstice on December 20, 2010, at 11:30:29
In reply to Re: Solstice :( I lose hope, posted by morgan miller on December 20, 2010, at 0:05:45
Hi Morgan -
I'm a little worried about how my response might be interpreted, so please let me just say that I am not directing this at *you* - as much as I'm trying to tease apart the myriad ways we understand things.
> >Muffled - I understand why it feels to you like Bob is telling Christempowered that he's 'bad.'
>
> That's not it.Here, I was speaking specifically to Muffled 'hearing' Bob's request that CE rephrase as a statement about CE being 'bad.' Muffled had some understandable righteous indignation at the idea of Bob implying CE was 'bad' because of CE's description of one end of the pendulum of his thinking as being to wholly subscribe to 'anti-psychiatry hogwash.' If Bob had told CE that he was 'bad' because of his way of describing his inner struggle - then I'd have probably pounced on Bob myself! Thing is - Bob did not say CE was 'bad.' He didn't even say that being in opposition to anti-psychiatry is 'bad.' He didn't even say that exactly what CE said was 'bad.' He just asked that CE rephrase it, because there could be someone reading the post who is a member here - or some random unsubscribed reader - who is anti-psychiatry, and using 'hogwash' to characterize their belief system might make them feel put down. So please know that in this case, I was only attempting to speak to how Bob's low-threshhold request to rephrase felt to Muffled. And Muffled's life experience plays a large role in why it felt this way to her. My goal was to give her another set of spectacles to see it through.
> It's the unrelenting "schooling" that was going onOk.. so the unrlenting schooling is offensive to you. I remember the word patronizing being used as well. I understand why it might feel like Bob is 'schooling' people. He's an administrator - so he has all the power. He also has a high level of education that only a relatively small percentage of the US population achieves. With that, he's got one of the most timeless and honored titles (Doctor) that one can carry in this country. In thr US we don't have English nobility titles to dilute the effect of someone being addressed as "Doctor so-&-so." Add on top of all that, the component that Bob is very directly instructing someone to take what they originally said, and say it again in a more acceptable manner. It is perfectly natural for an adult to feel diminished by this all-powerful (in Babbledom) Doctor Bob telling them to say something 'better.' I have had my own very long struggle with how to perceive authority-type figures. But I think it's important to remember that Bob has only a few words he uses to describe his intent for the site he created. One of them is 'education.' So in light of that, maybe those of us who choose to participate in the community should expect Bob to 'school' us somewhat. And another angle of it would be to recognize that if he didn't 'school' us - and just without-a-word slammed down the guillotine of a block, I think I would prefer to suffer thru a little 'schooling' :-)
> that I felt(and I believe others did as well) was disrespectful and unnecessary,You are the one who makes the call for yourself about whether it was disrespectful - and I think it feeling 'disrespectful' might be part-and-parcel of it feeling like being 'schooled' - but Bob's request - even if it is low-threshold - it wasn't disrespectful.
> whether Crist_Empowered felt bad during it or not.Well - I think we're in an area of really fuzzy edges here. Perceptions really are everything. And it helps a lot to be flexible enough to view Bob's administrative work as charitably as possible. And the really significant thing here is that it very likely did feel like 'schooling' (or worse) to CE - but he never missed a step in being gracious in his responsiveness. As a result - we got to watch a young man who struggles with uncertainties about his self-perception because of the judgmental small-town environment he grew up in - and he behaved like a prince in responding to something that was potentially a huge trigger. I hope Christempowered sees that about himself... sees himself as the 10-foot tall gracious young man that he was during that discourse.
> >Just give it some thought. Try to read through the dialogue between CE and Bob.and try to 'hear' Bob saying "CE, you're a great guy, but this thing you said about anti-psychiatry and hogwash might make someone who is very anti-psychiatry feel like he's not welcome. I'm worried about them feeling bad. Can you rephrase your opinion in a way that wouldn't make an anti-psychiatry person feel bad about themselves?" Maybe if you can say that in your head as you read it, you'll be able to see it from a perspective that doesn't feel so threatening to you.
>
> But that isn't how Bob said it.I intentionally did not use Bob's words. What I was providing there, was how *I* heard Bob's words. And that's my point - that when we get into the very fuzzy area of perceptions - we are each influenced by our very different life experiences - and we also have the ability to choose how we perceive things.
> Is this how you think it should have been approached? If it is, then you must disagree with how Bob approached it.I think this is one way it can be perceived. Bob is Bob, and he has his style of communicating. He tends to be brief, non-explanatory, and is often direct. His style can be annoying at times to some people. My style is quite opposite. I'm anything but brief :-) I tend to explain and re-explain. Sometimes I'm direct, but usually I take a long and winding road when I want to lead someone to an understanding of a concept I have in my head. I am well aware that my style can also be very annoying at times to some people. I think Bob approaches things as best as he can within his natural style of doing so. As long as he's not being uncivil, those of us on the receiving end are responsible for how we choose to 'hear' what he says. Those of us who still carry throbbing wounds of trauma will have a more difficult time 'hearing' Bob charitably because what he says gets filtered through the pain of the particular trauma we carry. I was recently intrigued by Dinah pointing out that she has little trouble with authority figures because she suffered more at the hands of peers than authority figures. My experience is opposite that. I have found a good place of healing with regard to my trauma - and it has been a very long and painful road. But because I have the memory of the past and my journey of healing is embedded in my marrow, it is very, very easy for me to see and relate to the difficulties I see here in how Bob is perceived through the wounding experiences of our trauma histories. I also know that crucial to the process of my own healing, was my therapist being able to gently keep leading me to other bins of water to drink from. I was suspicious of drinking - and I frequently refused to drink... at least while T was looking. But alone at night, my mind would replay the sights and sounds of those different bins of water, and I experimented - taking a sip here from this one - and a sip there from another one. Over time, I became comfortable - almost not even realizing that I was willingly accepting alternative ways of perceiving things. Before I knew it - I ended up with a reperatoire of perception options that were so helpful to me, that it became easier and easier to discard the perceptions that were borne of my trauma history. I'm not a therapist - but have had a spectacular one - and having internalized my therapist and my therapy - maybe it comes very natural to me to talk about the water bins I was led to that were cool, refershing, 'clean.' There's an endless supply of it - and I enjoy sharing it.
Solstice
poster:Solstice
thread:973963
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20101201/msgs/974112.html