Monday, January 15, 2007
What You Say vs What You Do
During part of my life I worked as an in-home crisis counselor. I would visit families in crisis and try helping them sort the chaos out and find solutions the the crisis. Anyone working in this area knows that to be effective it works best if you have gone through similar situations successfully.
This means you can offer insights and suggestions from personal experience and not theory from some book. Fortunately or unfortunately I have struggled through a lot of dysfunction in my life and learned a lot the hard way.
Listening to family members tell their own side of the story made no sense at all. Every family member could justify their own position and say why other family members were at fault.
Time after time the situation would boil down to family members taking unfair advantage and manipulating other family members. People resent being manipulated, especially when it is unfairly done. Educating the family on unfair manipulations and teaching them healthy alternatives was an important part of resolving crisis.
The other factor was when family members would say one thing and their physical actions said another. Sometimes things were so bad that I couldn't tell who was lying and who was telling the truth. Everyone was very convincing.
That's when I told people to shut up. I was not interested in hearing reasons why things went wrong. I was only interested in physical actions and physical results. Who did what to who? I didn't need to know why. Child abuse or Parent abuse both happen. There are ways to get what you want without being abusive. There are ways to fight fairly and maintain self respect and self esteem. There are ways to create win-win situations. Abuse is abuse and needs to be confronted. It can never be justified.
In my own life I confronted the same weakness. I talk a good show and my actions are not always backing up what I say. In retrospect I will talk alot about what I am going to do, perhaps more than I should until people think I'm a windbag. But I reach a point where I will actually do it.
Writing is a perfect example. Since high school I said I was a writer and wanted to write books. I got into arguments and debates with other friends that wanted to be writers too. When I experienced my first heartbreak I did write some teenage angst poetry but that was it. I wanted to be a writer but I was not writing anything.
The desire to write would come and go in spurts. At the age of thirty I took some writing courses and completed the assignments graduating from the courses with honors but still not writing on my own. At the age of forty I seriously tried writing my first two books, OAK:Foundations and OAK:Magister Templi.
I finished them as rough drafts and called it good enough. Several years later I realized my wife was right. They were not readable. I still was not writing other stuff. I remained a writer that would not write. Consider Stephen King. He began writing as a teenager and continued all through his life. Many people think you need to begin when you are young or it won't work. They forget Edgar Rice Burroughs was forty when he began writing the Tarzan books.
I was getting old and still hadn't produced much of anything. Was I lying to myself? In a way yes and in a way no. I thought I knew what writing was about but I really didn't. In this respect I was lying to myself.
It was only when I turned forty eight and took three months off to write Anarchist Knight:Apprentice that I finally understood. Almost two years later I was holding the first copy in my hands. I never dreamed how much work it was to write a book and I never knew how rewarding it was.
There is a big difference between saying you are a writer and actually being a writer. For forty some years I was kidding myself about being a writer. It is only now that I understand the easy competence of writing something every day. Today for the first time I can say with honesty that I am a writer.
It was the same in families I was working with. Many family members were kidding themselves as well. They were saying one thing and not following through on their promises or agreements. It is better not to make a promise or agreement then to break it. It sounds so simple but these families simply needed to be reminded to keep their promises and agreements. They also needed to learn about being fair and allow win-win situations without trying to manipulate each other to get their own way.
Sometimes it helps to have someone tell us that we are not doing the things we say we are doing. This means confronting us and making us confront ourselves.
What are you doing to make your life better and richer? What are you doing to make your relationships with loved ones better? What are you doing that makes life meaningful and worthwhile? Are you taking the physical actions needed or are you lying to yourself?
Anarchist World Live Join the Revolution today! Online rss community of free men and free women. Let Freedom Ring!
This means you can offer insights and suggestions from personal experience and not theory from some book. Fortunately or unfortunately I have struggled through a lot of dysfunction in my life and learned a lot the hard way.
Listening to family members tell their own side of the story made no sense at all. Every family member could justify their own position and say why other family members were at fault.
Time after time the situation would boil down to family members taking unfair advantage and manipulating other family members. People resent being manipulated, especially when it is unfairly done. Educating the family on unfair manipulations and teaching them healthy alternatives was an important part of resolving crisis.
The other factor was when family members would say one thing and their physical actions said another. Sometimes things were so bad that I couldn't tell who was lying and who was telling the truth. Everyone was very convincing.
That's when I told people to shut up. I was not interested in hearing reasons why things went wrong. I was only interested in physical actions and physical results. Who did what to who? I didn't need to know why. Child abuse or Parent abuse both happen. There are ways to get what you want without being abusive. There are ways to fight fairly and maintain self respect and self esteem. There are ways to create win-win situations. Abuse is abuse and needs to be confronted. It can never be justified.
In my own life I confronted the same weakness. I talk a good show and my actions are not always backing up what I say. In retrospect I will talk alot about what I am going to do, perhaps more than I should until people think I'm a windbag. But I reach a point where I will actually do it.
Writing is a perfect example. Since high school I said I was a writer and wanted to write books. I got into arguments and debates with other friends that wanted to be writers too. When I experienced my first heartbreak I did write some teenage angst poetry but that was it. I wanted to be a writer but I was not writing anything.
The desire to write would come and go in spurts. At the age of thirty I took some writing courses and completed the assignments graduating from the courses with honors but still not writing on my own. At the age of forty I seriously tried writing my first two books, OAK:Foundations and OAK:Magister Templi.
I finished them as rough drafts and called it good enough. Several years later I realized my wife was right. They were not readable. I still was not writing other stuff. I remained a writer that would not write. Consider Stephen King. He began writing as a teenager and continued all through his life. Many people think you need to begin when you are young or it won't work. They forget Edgar Rice Burroughs was forty when he began writing the Tarzan books.
I was getting old and still hadn't produced much of anything. Was I lying to myself? In a way yes and in a way no. I thought I knew what writing was about but I really didn't. In this respect I was lying to myself.
It was only when I turned forty eight and took three months off to write Anarchist Knight:Apprentice that I finally understood. Almost two years later I was holding the first copy in my hands. I never dreamed how much work it was to write a book and I never knew how rewarding it was.
There is a big difference between saying you are a writer and actually being a writer. For forty some years I was kidding myself about being a writer. It is only now that I understand the easy competence of writing something every day. Today for the first time I can say with honesty that I am a writer.
It was the same in families I was working with. Many family members were kidding themselves as well. They were saying one thing and not following through on their promises or agreements. It is better not to make a promise or agreement then to break it. It sounds so simple but these families simply needed to be reminded to keep their promises and agreements. They also needed to learn about being fair and allow win-win situations without trying to manipulate each other to get their own way.
Sometimes it helps to have someone tell us that we are not doing the things we say we are doing. This means confronting us and making us confront ourselves.
What are you doing to make your life better and richer? What are you doing to make your relationships with loved ones better? What are you doing that makes life meaningful and worthwhile? Are you taking the physical actions needed or are you lying to yourself?
Anarchist World Live Join the Revolution today! Online rss community of free men and free women. Let Freedom Ring!
Who knows why one person gives up and dies while another struggles on through overwhelming odds and comes out on top? We all want to survive. But are we willing to do what needs to be done?
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# posted by anarchistbanjo @ 5:51 PM 
