A forty-five minutes bike ride in rain…A fifth posting today? Actually not so happy… I met a man on roller skis with a helmet, so I didn’t see his face properly, and not his hair. A tall man. And wonder if it was the father of one of my pupils, a man I met for the first time on Wednesday. He has been totally invisible until now. And I have had his daughter for almost seven years I think. He is a businessman, one of the wealthiest in this county I think. Of some reason this triggered something… Was the drip on something?
Thought on my first posting today: you need support of some kind to confront people, phenomena? You need someone you feel confident with and someone you feel you can rely on, who won’t abandon you… If you feel insecure in many areas of your life you maybe have almost no margins bringing things up. You need at least to have a partner, family, or friend that stands there beside you? But if you don't have any of this, what do you do?
And you need support the more delicate the matter is. Of course you can think that the matters you want to bring up are much more sensitive than they really are. And isn’t it very sad (and can be tragic even) if you don’t challenge this and realize that the topic wasn’t so "hot" as you feared? Oh, I don't find a better expression, don't find the words really!!
Thought about censoring too out there… I was encouraged once by a male therapist not to censor things. My interpretation: not censoring anything. He left the interpretation of what he meant by this to me. And as I didn’t ask about more specified information he didn’t give me it either. And you can imagine maybe what the clever girl did? Started to inform about “everything”. Was it like this with the small girl once? Not allowed having anything secret? Being like an open book to her mom?
I thought about my blogs again and commentators there, including comments I have read on the net since I discovered the blogs and commentator-functions…
The topic censoring by rejecting comments for instance. And doing it with no motivation maybe. Compared to rejecting postings on a forum that is therapy-like…
Thought of what I have read about verbal and emotional abuse, in "What is Abuse?"… And once again what Miller has said and written about the Wall of Silence surrounding an individual by silence and not informing her/him about why what se/he wrote was rejected, what it was that made this… About the possible consequences and outcomes of this.
And what stood in the article “Narcissistic Authoritarianism in Psychoanalysis.” Where it for instance stands:
“Supervisor 2: I was presenting a patient, in my final year of training, whom I liked a great deal. I was speaking of a struggle I had been having with listening to her, connected to my sense that she was defending against a great deal of shame. As a result, she seemed to use at times a very contrived, theatrical persona when she communicated with me, a persona that stood in sharp contrast to what seemed like another aspect of her which emerged in some sessions, a more related, reflective, alive version of her. My patient and I had begun to be able to talk about this, and I was relating this to my supervisor. I repeated a remark I made to the patient, to the effect that I found myself more engaged and connected to the real person than to the theatrical persona. Without waiting to learn how my patient reacted, my supervisor colored, stiffened and said quite sharply, in a tone of rebuke I don’t think I had heard since about 7th grade: ‘And who do you think you are to have said that to her?’ [Addition April 13: I don't really believe in his approach as therapist though; trying to change the client, I want to underline! But that's the psychoanalytical approach, just analyzing, and this is supposed to lead to changes? Through greater awareness? But I think the risk is that it adds self-blame...]
I was a fourth year candidate, and tired of being afraid of my supervisors, no matter how much I was depending on their support, so I raised an eyebrow or two and looked quizzically into my supervisor’s eyes, as if to say, ‘you aren’t really taking that tone with me, are you?’ After a tense momentary standoff, he softened. The supervisor went on to be less reproachful and more facilitative, but we did not return to or try to work through what happened until the following week, when while reporting on the same patient, I let my supervisor know that I was aware, during my session with the patient subsequent to my supervision, of imagining my supervisor negatively judging all of my interventions, including ‘uh huh’ and ‘mmm hmmm.’ Without hesitation, my supervisor said that he was having a stressful day the week before and that I should go ahead and work without imagining him disapproving of me. Although I was the one initiating all the processing of what had happened, I appreciated his concession, and we got on pretty well from there. And yet, I would have to say that my trust was somewhat shaken from that point on.
This supervisor was willing to be accountable for his shaming, intimidating behavior, but only after I brought it up, and only nonchalantly, and with no apology. It is of course entirely expectable that one might slip up and err as a supervisor by being too didactic, or reacting hastily in a shaming way. This can and does happen with most supervisors, sooner or later. But as I see it, the supervisor then has the responsibility to process with the supervisee what has happened, and to repair the disruption. In the absence of such willingness to process, the supervisee, who is likely to be vulnerable to a shaming and intimidating supervisor, may develop more anxiety about disapproval than would already be normally present. His work as he presents it could then become organized around receiving the supervisor’s approval, around meeting supervisory requirements which are subjectively biased toward the supervisor’s particular theoretical and technical preferences, and which are shaped by the supervisor’s narcissistic concerns. The supervisee learns to develop a ‘false supervisee self’ based on compliance. In my view, this also greatly increases the chances that the supervisee will go on to elicit similar results with his patients.”
I can see parallels in other circumstances.
Now ironing some clothes to the concert... Raining even more. Or now it looks like snow mixed rain.
PS. I would actually want to swear (something that usually don't exist in my vocabulary at all!!!). I am so fed up with apologizing for my whole existence. For being so clever, competent and managing despite everything. Positive, glad, understanding, thinking of... And in other occasions I am lousy... Apologizing for that I haven't really broken down yet? Of some reason been standing on my feet, and keeping up a facade?? Apologizing for my background, keeping it secret, hidden. Excusing for all and everything?
It's this with a nail in the foot again? What I have sacrificed - do anyone see this? (does it matter if anyone do? Should it have to matter?) Have been hiding it? Have been able, cleverly, to cook soup on a nail as we say... Satisfied with nothing? Cheerfully smiling?
Actually a student reacted once when I sat there behind the Grand during a very long rehearsal with a choir, patiently...
Am I in the mood for going on the concert, socializing?
In a long article about our grade system and proposed changes in it (again) it stood about research in this area. They wrote about studies that has shown that grades influence the self image: If you get high grades/reports this makes the self image positive and you stop making your best because it isn't needed. If you get low (poor?) reports or grades your self image is affected in a negative way and then you stop trying because it's no idea. So according to this research grades don't stimulate neither those with a positive self image nor the ones with poor. And on top comes self fulfilling prophecies. They are taking it from the wrong angle I think really.
And what is in the bottom of these reactions actually?
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