Must Everything Be Said? Unsolicited Criticism

 Must Everything Be Said? Unsolicited Criticism

Of course not, we all know that. 

This one should come after the post on Asking Personal Questions, but life got in the way. 

The Proverbial Knife to the Heart

When we have what we think is an intimate, close relationship and it isn't based on anything except shared background, let's just say we're talking about extended family, we might feel that the boundary that ordinarily gives us pause isn't there, that it doesn’t need to be.

But if you tear down a fence you’re likely to trespass.

 

We're thinking: family. This is how families interact. They simply say what they think to one another. But really, that isn’t how healthy families interact. In a healthy family members are careful about what we say to one another, and how they say it. That may seem obvious to some, but if it were that obvious family therapists would be out of work. 

 

The most common violence id domestic. It occurs in the family. It is filed under Domestic Abuse in the therapydoc dictionary. 

Because cousins, let's just say, have known one another since childhood, because some of their more interesting adventures started in one another's homes on Sundays or on Thanksgivings, there can be a sense that what happened then, who we happened to be then, is open to discussion, as if it still represents who we are today. 

Cousins are in on secrets. They have proprietary knowledge. Nobody can shame us like our family. It is one of the reasons so many families 'break up.' 

I have a cousin who had a very close relationship with his mother. His mother had a close relationship with my mother. My mother confided in my aunt and my aunt surely shared her secrets, many of them, with my cousin. 

Would we call that enmeshment, even emotional incest?

I would. 

But more to the point, does this mean my cousin thinks he knows me? He knows what makes me tick? I think it does. He behaves this way, seems to feel he has the right to be honest with me, to tell me  what he thinks about, say, a personal choice I have made, maybe how I dress. 

We would call that unsolicited criticism. Who wants that? 

 

No one wants that. 

 

So, have I told him off when it has happened, when I have born the brunt of too much honesty? 

 

I have not. I don’t feel close enough. I’m afraid it might hurt his feelings. He definitely doesn't see his criticism as inappropriate. How do I tell him it is? Well, I could just say: I don't think I asked for your opinion. That's a good line. 

Looking into why I can totally coach other people in these situations, yet can't take my own advice, I have to do some soul searching. 

I think: 

(1) It might impact the future of our relationship and there aren’t too many of us first cousins. But actually there are. 

(2) I’m a conflict avoider in general, prefer him to think we are close, brother and sister. It is what our parents would have wanted. It is what WE want.

(3) When the time is right maybe I will tell him I don’t appreciate his opinions when they are negative. But I don't want to pick the wrong time. The wrong time is when a person is still upset about something. That's not the right time to have an intellectual conversation. 

(4) I׳m codependent. A people pleaser. Need to  be liked. He won't like me if I make a big deal about 'nothing.' Maybe. 

But I have to think about my mother and what she would say (my cousin also thinks he 'gets' my mother, but he doesn’t. My mother would use an expression, Shalom bayit, keep the peace in the home, in the family. She loved peace. It’s cheap, you know. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut. 

 

Plus I know that one day I’ll find a good place for the conversation. It will happen. 

 

We could stop right here and say that the moral of the story is that pseudo-intimacy, not rocking the boat to sustain a relationship, no matter how many years you have had a particular relationship, is good. Or at least not the worst thing. 

BUT THE BETTER SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM OF UNSOLICITED ADVICE/CRITICISM IS AS FOLLOWS

What I should do is what I tall patients to do. This is what you do, friends, when someone hurts your feelings.

 

a) You pretend that they just stuck a knife into your heart. (It's on the left side of your chest.

b) Then you wince and dramatically grab the imaginary knife in your right fist. You take great pains to pull it out of your heart, your right arm making a very wide arc, a broad stroke until your fist is horizontal to your body. 

c) Then you drop the knife to the ground. 

d) THEN you fall down and pretend to be dead, eyes closed. 

e) You open one eye and say, 'Ya got me. That hurt.'

 

Should have done that! Something tells me I'll get another chance.

 

therapydoc

Turkish Air and My Implicit Bias

TURKISH AIR

 Definitely a better priced trip. On time, a good deal, and no luggage lost. At least not yet. 

So I think I told you I’d be leaving on a jet plane. That happened, and it was fine. Jet lag, which didn’t affect me much my last trip, is murder only eight months later. I don’t even want to tell you how many time zones we skipped in a matter of 24 hours. 

 

One of the things that happened on the way over provides us with a good example of IMPLICIT BIAS. Mine. My implicit bias. It isn’t something I’m proud of, but like anyone who takes the standardized test on racism, the Banaji-GreenwaldImplicit Association Test (IAT), I fail miserable at beneficence. Turns out I prefer white people, which feels wrong but the test is standardized and I believe the results are valid. The best I can aspire to is cultural humility, which refers to knowing how little we know about others, respecting the differences, recognizing that we share 98% of our DNA regardless of socialization. Humility is respect for difference, acknowledgement of our ignorance regarding acculturation. 

Therapists know this intuitively. We are not raised the same, we do not share a world view, each of us is unique. But we're all human.  

 

What makes me most humble is not even being able to predict my reactions in a culturally dissonant environment. I know I’m about to fly an airline headed for Turkey, yet somehow expect that skin color on the plane will be much more heterogenous than it is. Not that I mind, indeed embrace the 'experiment,' but there's a level of anxiety which to me is indicative of my explicit bias. A part of me is ready, knows my comfort zone is uncomfortable. A little uncomfortable. 

 

Cognitively, like most of us probably, in my head I’m thinking I’m totally unbiased about people, but it isn’t true. Not expecting such a homogenous crowd is one indicator, not expecting to be uncomfortable, another. The feeling that my skin color sticks out like a sore thumb makes me conscious of my gold necklace, my ring. If that isn't bias, what is? 

 

Knowing your bias makes it explicit, not implicit bias. That it is a surprise indicates it is implicit until it isn't. Not proud of this, it gets worse. I have to fight with myself to be charitable when someone tries to budge in front of me. 

 

Let’s backtrack to Assertiveness 101. Somewhere on this blog there is the example—there has to be because it is my go to example of assertive behavior. Assertiveness lies on a continuum between passivity, saying nothing at all when someone tries to cut in line in front of you and aggressiveness, calling such a person terrible names or threatening to deck them for presuming they can skip the wait and push themselves ahead of you in line when you have already been waiting in line, along with those in front of you and behind, for some time. 

 

Assertiveness looks like this. You get that person’s attention, perhaps with a tap on the shoulder, you point to the end of the line and say, 

'The end of the line is way back there. Not here.'

Most people will walk away, pretend to walk toward the end of the line but they are really looking for a passive individual who will let them cut in. Budge, we used to call it.   

 

We get to the airport in plenty of time, about three hours early for an international flight. The passengers in line are mostly of middle-eastern descent, and the language I’m hearing people speak sounds like none other. The dialect is not recognizable to me. I can only assume that I am in a crowd of about four hundred people going home to the motherland, to Turkey.

 

I feel like a minority, which is different, as I’ve already said (still working it out, feeling conspicuous). When an airline official leaves his post behind the rope to speak to us he directs his words to me. Why me? I think, privilege. It cuts like a knife, but is what it is. He tells me, glancing at the others in line only slightly as he speaks, that unfortunately the computers are down and only one is working. It will be quite a wait to check our bags. I feel the privilege, an odd mix of discomfort and flattery. 

 

The line to check in grows and grows until finally the problem resolves and it begins to move. Just a little. Very slowly. A woman who is not in line pulls her son and husband along, intending to merge in front of me. She has chosen poorly. She does not know that I teach assertiveness and will have none of this. Yet a large part of me does not want to be culturally insensitive. Yet I feel this behavior is cross-culturally likely to be considered anti-social behavior. It has to be!

 

She had been standing there, next to us, outside the line representing her family, waiting for an opening. She does not know that this brings out the worst in me, that I hate this. I have done this as a younger person, cut in front of others, and hated myself when I grew up and realized how anti-social, how disrespectful it is. Now I’m older and disrespect others who do the very same thing I did. A superego is a dangerous thing. Being judgey isn't social, either.

 

As she begins to make her move I say, ‘Excuse me. Are you traveling with these people?’ 

I gesture toward the two fellows, a man and his older teenager who have been waiting with us about 45 minutes. 

 

‘No, no,' she assures me, and steps back to try again somewhere else. 

When I look back it appears she has found success, has managed to game the line only a few yards behind us. We don’t make eye contact. 

 

I think, this is surely cross-cultural behavior. There’s at least one in every group and self-hate generalizes to hate, I get it. 

But I am upset that she is representing her people, that she is potentially building implicit bias toward the Turks! But she is not doing that. The rest of us are commiserating about the wait, we are all making the best of a bad situation. Everyone is wonderfully kind and interesting, and I think—she must be, too. She simply has this need to be first without having to work for it.

 

I did not send her to the back of the end of the proverbial line. I did not say, 'The end of the line is back there,' the traditional assertive response. I just said, ' No, you can’t cut in front of me. Try again.' Then I work to not to judge, to think things like, maybe she or someone in her group has a medical condition and can’t stand for a long period of time. 

 

But I’m traveling with a woman who will be 98 years old in January and refuses a wheel chair. So it is hard to think that way

therapydoc

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When to Ask Personal Questions and a Couple of Book Reviews

Written before the Cardinal-Phillie playoff. The Cardinals lost. 

 

This would be the post before the post mentioned in the first half of the title of this post. Now that you're completely confused you feel like I feel packing for a trip.

 

Like many, this topic, When to Ask Personal Questions, which will be the next post, did not come from nowhere. Yet it took an entire evening to figure out the source. It came from somewhere. But where? No idea. Why am I writing about this? More to the point, why am I 

writing as FD speaks to me about the Cardinals and Albert Pujois, all very relevant and important to him, and he thinks I am listening, yet,  entre nous, I am hearing but not comprehending. We humans don't parallel process conversations, and a conversation in your head is a conversation.

 

You've been there. Someone is talking to you at a wedding and you're listening, but another's conversation seems more interesting so you listen in on that, too, and in the process you totally lose track of the first and have to fake your way through. It is a bad feeling. Generally I wouldn't have minded faking but the joke is on me since this could have been educational. I never have understood how the playoffs work.  

 

Still, I had already started the post. It is hard to stop. Writing is crack, you know. 

 

My assumption is that you, dear reader, don't care where my ideas come from, and you assume that they are informed, that there's some proprietary knowledge backing me up. All true! It could be from having seen so many things so many times, or sure, from The Books, the digital library. Not remembering the source of the post niggled at me until. . . I remembered! It came to me in a dream! No, not true. It did not. I'd been reading a novel and a character, a very socially withdrawn, people-hating protagonist (sounds good, I know) is triggered to sheer loathing when people ask her personal questions. 

 

Sorrow and Bliss, that's where I got the inspiration, thank you Meg Mason. Of course. Martha. Martha's personal space is precious to her. She hates people who poke at it. If I were to analyze Martha I'd find no end to the number of theories: fear of exposure, shame, paranoia, imposter syndrome, a fear that her answers either might be disingenuous or snarky, wishing to protect herself from re-traumatization. Or simply, My life is none of anyone's bees wax. Business.

 

We were leaving someone's lunch in the succah* on Monday afternoon and a friend that I've known for half my life told me with great sincerity how happy she is that we're seeing more of one another lately. We have a new friend, A. who loves to entertain and A. invites us and we accept because we like her. I try to get out of most invitations, just so you should know. Good reasons, all good reasons. 

Oh, why not tell you. I decline invitations for lunch and dinner most of the time because sitting for hours at the table is painful, a pinched nerve thing, a condition that therapists or people who sit for a living probably all end up with eventually, which compels me in particular to stand much of the day, even at 'a dinner' which just looks weird. That or I use a special pillow, which begs explanation, or if it is in my own home, sit on a special chair. When people ask me why I do these things I want to kill them. 

 

I tell this to my old friend, the one happy that we are seeing more of one another lately, and she acts as if that's all perfectly normal. I knew she would, which is why I told her all of that. Everyone needs a touch of validation sometimes. I also didn't want to have to invite her for dinner or be invited, so there you go.

 

I do not tell her that one day I will become a famous author having sold zillions of books on How to Manage your Sacro-Illiac (S-I), small fiber sensory neuropathy, the technical term, and not kill people who ask questions about it.

 

Joke! Nobody cares. There is no book. 

 

Anyway, one of the things I do to manage pain is stand a lot and use a balance board to keep the circulation moving. 

 

On the evening following the fast of Yom Kippur about a week ago I feel like blogging and start this post while FD mused about the St. Louis Cardinals. Usually he calls his brother to do this but on this particular night has chosen to tell me, which is a privilege, a joy, and a challenge for both of us. He tires of speaking to a confused partner and eventually drifts off to bed. At this point I am on the balance board blogging, winding down, hoping sleep will be possible. It isn't always after a fast. Eating breakfast after a fast (a real fast, no food or water for 25 hours) tells my body to rise and shine! Not go to sleep.

 

I tire of blogging and consider moving from Blogger to Word Press but the thought makes me tired so I head off to join FD in bed. 

 

We get cozy with our little LCD reading lights worn proudly around our necks. Mine is pink, his is black. 

I want to return two library books the next day, Meg Mason's Sorrow and Bliss and Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But can only pick one.

 

I'm not sure I care enough to finish Dave's story. It is autobiographical but so long-winded that I keep wanting to say, Dave, who cares? But I feel badly for him so I skip about a hundred pages (he tells us we can! he even tells us which ones!) and read a bit of his heartbreaking work of staggering genius, which, yes, is a tongue and cheek title but a very wonderful character study and a sad story with a lot of frisbee. 

Still, you should probably read it if stories about parent loss don't upset you too much, especially if you like how boys play. They are rough! They pound! They wrestle. They play frisbee. PLUS, you can skip those hundred pages and Dave doesn't care, a huge bonus. The book is new to me even though it was published twenty years ago. I returned it to the library at this writing so I can't tell you exactly the publishing date but am leaving on a jet plane tomorrow and haven't time to go googling such things. Anyway, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius reminds me very much of  David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest which put me into a depressive coma many years ago. 

Not. But the potential, definitely there.

 

As much as I shy away from psychological fiction, especially biographical fiction about depression (not sure if Sorrow and Bliss is biographical) Meg Mason's sample on Amazon had me five pages in. Full disclosure, as much as I liked it, do avoid if you lean toward depression and your boundaries are poor. 

 

Martha, protagonist of Sorrow and Bliss makes a decision not to have children. She is clearly  brilliant and cannot suffer fools. She vets people hard, hates most everyone, even the ones she loves. She cannot speak to the unlucky soul who steps in that dog poop by asking her why she does not want-have children. Most people her age (30's) ask her this question. 

 

That's the inspiration for that next post, When to Ask Personal Questions. I thought the inspiration interesting, but maybe the story is boring. Lately my kids tell me that the stories I tell them are not really very interesting (they are kind, do not say boring) and it surprises me so I introduce a story by saying, My kids don't think my stories very interesting lately but . . and then blather on.

 

I'll try to finish the real post on the plane, no guarantees. There is nothing like a flight, a new adventure (a different airline!) to derail a therapist.

 

Until then, 

 

therapydoc 

*succah    Small hut built by Jews to celebrate the holiday Succot to recall Her protection as we circled around the wilderness after receiving the Torah before entering the Promised Land. You know the story.