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Last month in the Agnes comic strip, Agnes claimed she could smell numbers—and they didn’t smell good! Even with a self-made filter, she declared the smell still kept her from doing math. Of course, with Agnes, you never know if she means what she says or if she’s just trying to get out of doing work in school.
Well, I don’t know about you, but claiming that numbers smell bad is as good a reason as any for not doing your taxes. Yeah, I’m pretty sure the IRS would buy that logic just as well as Agnes’ principal did!
So yesterday I finished getting my papers ready for my appointment with the accountant—after his office manager (his wife) had “gently” reminded me on Facebook, of all places, that time was running short. The papers were all in a file folder, but I still needed to do things like finish the spreadsheet on my writing year and add up all business and medical mileage—which I did do. Nothing major, right?
I like to think that numbers are objective and, as such, bring about no emotional response—but I know I am only trying to fool myself. How can I forget that preparing monthly financial statements for a family business that was bleeding red could make my heart bleed red, too? Oh no, my subjective heart kept trying to find errors that could explain away the losses, but after my objective mind reported the truth, I could only read the reported numbers—and weep.
This time, totaling the medical miles reminded me of how long the journey has been. And so, I wept.
That simple objective number told the truth I didn’t want to remember. That number smelled bad—it smelled like fear, anger, disbelief, and a whole lot of other emotions I’d rather filter out—but can’t. I will never forget the detour that set us on the road we did not want to take.
The best I can do is be glad that that part of the detour is over and that we keep moving a lot closer to merging back onto the superhighway of expectations and dreams. Yes, there are still mileage numbers to report, but they’re starting to smell more like hope and joy.
All the hard work and emotions in those numbers are leading to a sign that reads “Detour Behind.”
The psalmist’s words begin to run through my head and, once again, I hear the music, played at our church each Holy Week, while the words of Psalm 22 are read and the altar is stripped.
Maybe these words are melodramatic compared to our family’s situation, but not being able to help my kids, despite years of effort and seeking various types of support, brings me to my knees. I am a mother who has tried to balance teaching my kids to deal with the world while trying to help them through the difficult areas when they don’t seem to fit with the world and its expectations. I have always struggled with knowing when to push them through a difficulty and when to advocate for them or find them help.
When they were toddlers, I had such illusions that I could teach them independence. I had them do things for themselves. I asked them to say what they needed. I tried hard to show them they weren’t helpless against a world, full of systems and people, where they would encounter both the fair and the unfair.
This week has left me wondering if I will ever figure that out. Not for them, not for myself, not even for the other quirky kids who are mystified by so much of this life.
To all the parents out there who think they control their kids and how they respond to life, I challenge them to look closely at who their kids were when they came to them. If having twins taught me anything at the beginning, it was that babies come with their own personalities—and sometimes with their own baggage. Whether that baggage is based on biological conditions or just on who they are, I cannot say.
What frustrates me is when I encounter people in the helping professions or the educational system who either don’t get this or have forgotten this in their pursuit of goals for the kids. From time to time, like over the course of this previous day, my encounters with this lack of understanding can temporarily drive me to despair.
When the experts spend too much time living in their theoretical realities and not in the kids’ realities, they can make decisions based on mistaken assumptions. And what a cost there can be in that.
My daughter doesn’t clam up in therapy because she is a rebel at heart. She is frightened and unsure how to take the next step. Yes, she’s in therapy to “get over” that, but she needs understanding first in order to help her stop digging in her heels. A simple sincere “You’re right; that’s tough and I want to help you figure out how your responses can change a little so that you feel better” goes a long way. But if somehow a counselor assumes that the reason she isn’t listening is because she thinks all authority should be questioned, then the ability to reach her is lost.
No matter how it appears to educators, my son, who is more of a rebel, knows very well the personal cost for him of doing too much homework—or having undone work hanging over his head. Many kids like him—those who find it so hard to focus on additional work after a day hard at work in school—have been sacrificed on the altar of homework since their early grade school years. Teachers said they could do it—and when those kids knew they couldn’t, they stopped trusting the authority of the adult leaders.
How I wish I could have spent those homework hours doing more hands-on activities with him, such as reading together, playing games, and creating things, instead of trying to play the role of the “good” parent who enforced the “no play until homework is done” rule.
My kids are good kids, even if they don’t fit in the box of the educational or therapy systems. How do I get educators and therapists to see that they are being crushed by the assumption that they are just willful kids instead of kids who resort to defense mechanisms to try to protect themselves? Wouldn’t they skip classes, turn to substance abuse, sneak out, etc. if they were really trying to stick it to us all?
But no, they go to their classes. They come to the therapy sessions. And when they are not heard regarding their difficulties, parts of them start to die.
Yes, they drive me crazy with their inability to do things the usual way, but over time I’ve come to concede that much of this really is an inability, not just a personal decision to toy with us. I have lived with them long enough to see the destructiveness of telling them they can do things easily that are in truth hard for them—or that they can’t—at least yet—do at all.
Do I think they shouldn’t ever have to do hard work or learn to do things in a new way? No.
However, aren’t they already working hard by trying to conform to systems that don’t suit them?
How will they continue to avoid despair when so often they are told if they were just trying harder, things would get better? If the experienced professionals can’t see how hard they are already trying, how will those professionals ever help them to find the help within themselves that they need?
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by people. Psalm 22:6, NIV
That verse reflects how my daughter often feels after these encounters—even when those in charge only want to help her change.
Sometimes the help I have sought for my children seems to be the opposite of what they need. And that makes me want to cry out:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Psalm 22:1a, NIV.
Then I remember other words:
For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help. Psalm 22:24, NIV.
Sometimes, when one of my kids has seemingly hit a wall, I can finally let go of what hasn’t worked.
So today I looked out the window, saw the early blooms on the forsythia, picked up my heart, and began to seek, once more, the help my kids need.
That’s when a new, creative way of doing things occurred to me—and I knew that, despite appearances, my cry for help had been heard.
A Cup of Comfort for New Mothers
“The Rope” is about my late pregnancy realization that I only had so much control over my future parenting journey. I was just starting to understand how difficult it was going to be care for two people—and yet help them to be who they were and to live in the world outside our home.
When I read this work I had written when my kids were five, I realized how little I knew then about what we would need to face in these years since. That’s the funny part about becoming a parent, you know that certain things are going to be difficult, but you don’t really KNOW what that means until you are living them.
I knew I loved sleeping in and soon would, instead, be sleep-deprived. I realized I would miss spontaneity. I could tell already that homework was not the most joyous parent/child encounter. I was sure I would miss out on a lot of exercise and there would be less time, money, and space. Nonetheless, I also knew I didn’t want to miss out on being mother.
I used to get annoyed when parents of older kids would say, “Just you wait.” As if I were stupid. I could see that things were different. I mean, to every person who would knowingly say, “Your life is really going to change . . .” when I was pregnant, I wanted to reply, “I know that—why do you think I didn’t pursue this parenting gig right after I got married?”
Yet, re-reading this story outloud to myself, I wanted to say the same things to the thirty-five-year-old me that other parents had said to me. Especially in light of what’s happened over the last several months.
In the current session in DBT, we are studying interpersonal effectiveness. There are four other families with teenaged daughters in the group. None of us knows why the other girls are in DBT or what other families have experienced. What we’re all there for is to do the hard work of moving beyond their pasts and improving all our presents and futures—finding a way back to enjoying the journey, if you will.
Wednesday night, for most of the time the parents and girls met in separate rooms. We parents were each asked to state one thing we want for our daughters and then describe how we feel when they don’t seem to make any progress in this area.
The pain in the descriptions was evident in a way it isn’t often during our meetings since we are focused on doing a lot of exercises—verbs.
I don’t imagine when we held our newborn baby girls that any of us thought for a moment that one day we would end up in a room in a hospital, working desperately to get those girls back on their journeys in a way that would allow them to be happy and productive. The journey to that room was not one any of us wanted to take.
The story I wrote ends like this:
My husband and I have since learned that there is more than one rope to hang on to and more than one river to navigate. The excursion that began with my body continues to take us both to places we had never planned to go. We can only hang on for dear life and try to enjoy the journey.
Everyone in that room has been hanging on. But, we need to remember to enjoy the journeys, too, even if we’d rather have known—instead of KNOWN—about certain phases of the journey.
Even KNOWING what I KNOW today, I still would have chosen to take this journey.
Tuesday night the world crashed again for her. But whether she likes to admit it or not, I saw that her work with the DBT moved her towards better resolutions. When she first started talking about what was on her mind, everything was either this or that, with no middle ground. Her request not to go to school was avoidance—from work and friends.
Yet as she continued speaking, she practiced her “what” and “how” skills, probably without even knowing it. First she observed that she was overwhelmed by all the work she still had left to do. And then she came up with a plan—which she did execute the next day—for using a day home from school for a work day.
Yesterday, even with work done, she still worried about the personal problem. Once again, in her mind, it was either this or that. Although the situation didn’t begin to resolve because of her own implementation of “how” skills, she got a chance to see that maybe she isn’t always right about people—and sometimes people can surprise you—for the good.
Then she “did what works” in response. She listened when she needed to and spoke when she needed to. After that, she let go of unproductive feelings. Her “reasonable mind” and “emotional mind” met as the “wise mind”—and then gave her the freedom to enjoy the rest of the night—and look forward to today.
In that frame of mind, she could accept that I wasn’t going to read Eat, Pray, Love to her without her taking care of that hurting leg muscle. Enough talking about the pain without doing something about it.
So, we looked plenty odd lying there on the floor with our legs up the wall, each of us grimacing in pain from the stretching of our strains. We weren’t as focused on the book as we usually are since our legs were screaming for attention—that and her brother, wound from acting in the opening night of “Pirates of Penzance,” kept pointing out funny double meanings to what I was reading outloud.
Maybe by 10:30 at night we weren’t doing a good job of being mindful and effective, but I know she did when it mattered—and that’s something she could sleep on.
And so could I.
Sometimes my biggest distraction (can I really make a hierarchy out of my distractions??!!) is my urge to fix things. And I mean things, not people. I have such a hard time turning off my inner operations person or inner editor.
Here, of course, I am applying this to other people’s documents or operations. I think they should change to do things my way. Snicker. Back to those control issues, right?
This is the same problem I had with Multiple Choice tests or True/False tests in school. What do the questions really mean? What is the intent? Please, give me an essay test where I can at least explain my answers in light of my understanding of the questions.
We have weekly homework with the DBT. The exercises vary in how challenging they are. I understand now how I didn’t quite use the techniques to my advantage this past week and what I need to do to be more effective in the future. What I don’t understand is how to fill out the homework form!
It’s not written well, at least for my mind. I really don’t think this just because I want to avoid the work or because I’m just a big complainer. I don’t “get” how to give them what they’re looking for—because it doesn’t seem to me that it’s what matters.
The assignment was to choose one distracting technique and one self-soothing technique to use to help deal with distress tolerance throughout the week. First of all, I approached this assignment from a general coping viewpoint for all distress, not in relation to the biggest challenges I have been facing lately. That meant I was looking for things that could help me with my overall mood.
Yet when I look at the recording sheet, it says to rate my distress tolerance both before and after using the strategy. You see, I am using the strategies proactively and these questions indicate, to me anyway, that maybe I should have been using strategies I could use reactively. In the end it’s how I react to big surprises or events that’s in big need of change, not how I’ve set up my life to deal with everyday stress in my life, such as driving, paying bills, and the minor conflicts over normal teenage issues.
I can hold ice in my hand if I have to. I can usually shake off the rude salesclerk. But how do I handle ongoing differences with my loved ones that I don’t know will ever resolve—at least the way I think they should?
So far, I don’t. I don’t think most people who know me would call me high-strung in general toward everyday life—it’s just in relation to the people and things that really matter to me.
This form wants me to rate how well the strategies served me for a whole day. Well, my days are filled with large stretches of coping well combined with a few incidents where my “grade” can only be recorded as “Needs Improvement” or even as “Needs IMPROVEMENT!!!” I use the strategies on and off throughout the day, both as needed and sometimes only when I remember to do so.
I get the intent of the exercise and I’ve definitely learned where I still need a lot of practice—I just don’t know how to fill out the form. I know I’ve already said that, but it’s a big roadblock for a fixer like I am.
Heck, I don’t even have an idea how this notebook is supposed to be organized. It’s really that confusing to me. All this reminds me that one of the reasons I didn’t pursue further studies in psychology was because I didn’t like how the subject was taught or organized. The writing tends to be obtuse, saying simple things in an overly complex way. By the time I’ve made it through a sentence, I’ve lost my interest in the topic.
Before you say that all my resistance toward the systems and the literature is simply a psychological excuse for not wanting change, I’d like to point out that operations management is so often about making continual changes to improve the experience. It’s about setting up a system so energy isn’t wasted on side issues.
Some day when we’ve gotten through this, I’d like to help this helping profession figure out how to be more productive in helping people change. Sometimes it really is all about having understandable documents and logical systems so people are able to focus on the real task at hand: fixing themselves.
This week’s distress tolerance assignment is less stressful for me than the last one. We’re working on crises survival strategies. That’s definitely something I could use!
Although, like I said in DBT last night, you can get away with deep breathing exercises and such for a short period of time, but when you’re involved in a long-term crisis, it’s so much harder to access your strategies, even when you know what to do.
Sometimes you’re just sad, angry, or unable to cope in the moment. No matter how much I exercised, wrote in my journal, went to Bible study, met with friends, etc., I couldn’t change the facts that my dad was dying, my son was having school troubles, and my daughter was having health issues. Those were just the realities of my life back in 2001 and 2002.
Still how could I have survived without those coping strategies? How am I still standing now after 2008? God, family, friends, my dog, yoga, running, writing, nature’s beauty, music—times, places, people, and activities that give me joy in the moment.
And yet, I can always use more help. That’s why, for this week’s assignment, I am actively pursuing other techniques to add to what I already do. I’m going to work harder on incorporating music into my day—using it to help me focus, calm down, relax, or enjoy myself, whatever I need when I am alone with that monkey mind of mine that likes to take me away on its whims. I’m aiming to get that monkey swinging behind me on the vines more often instead of me just following it blindly.
Right now I am listening to a mix CD I made for Sherman for Valentine’s Day last year. It’s full of songs that remind me of him and our love, as well as of the times—both good and bad—we’ve shared together. That whole sickness and health concept, you know? The songs wrap their arms around me and help me remember how lucky I am to have his support throughout all my challenging days.
The other less pleasurable thing I am pursuing I have attempted in small bursts over the past several years. I’ve chosen pushing away or containment for working through the unpleasant tasks I put off. As Dr. Shapiro says, if you eat the frog at the beginning of your day, the rest of the day seems so much better in comparison. So now that I’ve done those things, I am freer to do the things I want to do.
Frogs? Monkeys? Yikes, forgive me, Dawn M., for straying from your very sage maxim: Respect the Metaphor. Apparently today is my day for dis-respecting the metaphor. But, even with the mixed metaphors, I am not dis-respecting myself. No, I am busy practicing, mindfully, the skills of distracting and self-soothing, thank you very much.
I knew that group family therapy wasn’t going to be a picnic, but I didn’t expect the very first assignment to be the one thing I haven’t been able to do, despite over two and a half years of therapy. So, even though we’re not there specifically because of me, my weakness is exposed.
I don’t even think my family members realized that, all of a sudden, I felt very distressed. I do think one of the facilitators read my body language, but time was out for the session. I’m betting I get to talk about my experience next time!
We’re attending DBT or Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which is designed to help a person recognize the extremes in his or her thinking or reactions—or whatever—and learn to find a middle ground. In addition to the standard Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, there is a mindfulness component.
I have been working pretty hard on controlling my monkey mind, using techniques I’ve learned in yoga, as well as the treatments I’m getting for ADD. I am definitely getting somewhere because I no longer feel compelled to “amuse myself” frantically if I’m forced to wait somewhere. Last year I even managed to practice deep breathing techniques while waiting at least twenty minutes, on an exam table and half-dressed, of course, for the doctor. For once, I didn’t grab a magazine or my journal, but gave in to the rhythm of my breath.
At the beginning of yesterday’s session, we got to do one of those exercises where you close your eyes and hold out your hands to receive whatever the person wants to put in them. Did I mention that we were practicing distress tolerance? Well, we got to practice tolerating holding ice in our hands.
Just like Dr. Dennie says to do on difficult yoga poses, I focused on deep breathing techniques. I managed to “hold the pose” without much movement because of that. I was amazed at how well the years of training my mind are starting to pay off.
These days I can often access mindfulness to help calm physical distress. But when the facilitator read the assignment about scheduling our days, my heart started racing and I immediately began shifting from side to side.
Mindfulness seems just as elusive now, whenever I try to use it to compartmentalize time without specific boundaries, as it has my entire life. I can follow chronos for events and activities that are scheduled by others, but so far I cannot make myself be aware of Time’s passing when my options are open.
And that is essential to my being able to work for myself. This assignment points at the crux of who I can be professionally and, so far, I haven’t liked the answers I’ve found.
Somehow I know my therapist is going to think “Yes!” when she’s hears what I’m supposed to do this week. Now to stop the “No!!!” in my mind and see if I can deep-breathe enough to tolerate this distress—and finally see some progress.
There are times when you are tempted to think that saying something can’t matter because what’s done can’t be undone. But it’s amazing how much better you can feel if you hear both an apology and an acknowledgement that what happened to you really was not acceptable.
True, in this world, you can’t rely on such things happening. You do risk feeling unheard and no further ahead than before. And you’ll still have to keep going even when speaking up doesn’t seem to count for much.
But how will you know if you don’t try?
She tried. We tried. The efforts made a difference for her and us. They should make a difference for other kids and their families who don’t need to experience the distress our family experienced any more than we did.
Maybe you can’t change the world or every situation, but sometimes what you change is enough to retain your hope.
Only I feel like I’m the one living in operations hell. Sometimes I think the things I learned in my MBA classes are only nice fables, things I only believed because I was young and naïve.
You know, things like management cares about customer complaints or plans to treat the customers with respect, etc. This should be especially true in the service environment. The truth about service operations is that people aren’t widgets. You’re not manufacturing something out of metal. Your product is your service.
That means that it’s up to you to be aware of the customers’ condition when they are in need of your service. And in healthcare, that means setting up support and systems for disseminating information so that you’re able to meet people in the fragile condition in which they arrive.
You should assume that a person who arrives unexpectantly and in a crisis situation does not know all your rules. Expect that such people may not have their normal listening or reading skills available to them since they are so focused on just trying to get through the moment. Know that and create your systems around that.
If you’re not going to be really good about individually going through the facts with the patients or their families, then be prepared to have people make mistakes and be prepared to give them reminders and explanations. This may be your job day in and day out, but for many of us, it’s our first time in your system. With any luck, we won’t come back to become experts at how you do things.
Please don’t assume everyone is trying to get away with something. In fact, remember that even your staff can forget to follow the rules. Unless you have an airtight system, mistakes can occur on both ends.
Hear us out when we have concerns. Validate what we’re feeling even if you’re going to point out why you disagree. Perhaps with your knowledge and experience you really do know better than we do. However, it is possible that our personal perception of our family members or ourselves may be accurate. You may be working from a preconceived notion that is true for many people, but not for all.
It is hard enough to have to utilize emergency healthcare in the first place without having to feel unheard when we have concerns. This is your everyday life but our lives are in the balance. We shouldn’t have to apologize for being passionate about that.
Maybe it’s because I have a unique name, but I really think people should be called by their given names or by whatever else they choose. It’s not up to us to decide who people should be. That’s why, when my friend wanted to stop being called Liz and start being called Elizabeth, I worked hard to get there for her. And now, it would never even occur to me to call her Liz.
Our names are at the core of who we are. I can forgive someone who accidentally mispronounces my name, as long as they are willing to call me what I ask to be called. But I do not tolerate people who deliberately defy my wishes. If I can’t trust you to care about what I want to be called, I definitely can’t trust you with bigger requests.
Sometimes Life sets up the perfect situation for you to demonstrate what you mean when you encounter people who refuse to listen. OK, maybe I shouldn’t blame Life because it was the guy himself who chose to walk right into my sharpened wit.
Rich worked with payroll and found out that my full name was Patrina, not Trina, as I was known by. Now, I don’t mind my full name but so few people read how it is spelled that I get tired of correcting people and telling them it’s not Patricia. That’s annoying, but when they assume I want to be called Pat or Patty and do so even after I ask them not to, I am so over them.
“Hey, Patty!” Rich shouted as he came in my office.
“That’s Patrina or Trina to you,” I replied.
“Right, Patty,” he grinned.
This continued for a few minutes until I realized that with a nickname of Rich, his full name was probably Richard. And another nickname for Richard is . . .?
“OK, call me whatever you want, Dick,” I responded.
He turned red and said, “I’ll stick with Trina.”
My daughter’s name is not Christina. It’s not Chris. And if you make that mistake, I’ll correct you, nicely, the first time. Last night when the staff member yelled, “Chris!” at Christiana, I told her she goes by Christiana. The woman said, “I know that, but I’m going to call her Chris.”
When I told the next staff member about her being called Chris, she asked me why I didn’t tell her to call her Christiana. I relayed what happened. I guess the first woman calls her Christiana now and the other kids let Christiana know they thought I was one “bad” mother . . . for taking her on—in a good way.
It’s just incredible to me that someone in a helping profession would ignore someone’s name. If we can’t get you to respect our names, do you expect us to trust you with our deepest problems? That’s Christiana and Patrina to you, Ms. What’s Your Name.
Going the Distance 
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