the three big lies:
pondering this concept, i thought about how it's related to the biggest lie i know: "everything will be okay." few more useless statements exist.
everything might be okay. then again, it might not. about the only thing that can be said of any situation with certainty is that there will be an outcome eventually and, successfully or unsuccessfully, you will deal with it. in all likelihood, things won't turn out the way you hope. you'll be hurt and angry and disappointed and you'll have to find ways to deal with those feelings. you might do some really self-destructive things and make the situation worse. you might learn a lot and grow because of the pain. the choice is yours, even though maybe you can't connect to that, can't see the situation clearly enough to get in touch with the options before you.
it seems better to be realistic about things, to say openly that crash-and-burn is a real possibility, than to say things will be all right. so why do we persist in using that phrase?
two reasons, beyond the obvious (that it's easy to say it).
it reassures you when you say this to someone, because you're sending yourself the same message about your anxieties and fears. if you can convince someone else that everything will work out okay, then you can believe it a little more yourself.
more to the point, it puts things on a different level. you get to be the older and wiser person who understands more than i do about my current situation, who sees things i don't, who has some way to predict outcomes. since there's no way to know how things will work themselves out, you do great damage by giving false reassurances. because sometimes things are going to turn out as far from okay as they possibly can be, i have to be made aware of and ready to deal with that possibility.
being truly helpful to people in difficult situations means helping them face all the possibilities and helping them formulate strategies for coping, so that if things turn out badly they have skills and plans for dealing with it and getting on with life.
of course, most people aren't into helping people out of genuine concern for the people helped, though that concern may be a factor. it's also usually a way of subordinating other people, establishing your authority as a wise person who is helpful. too often, my strengths get lost in your ego; the process becomes more about your self-image than about my pain.
--
sine | deb
"i thank you God for most this amazing day, for the leaping
greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky" -- cummings
Subject: Re: big lies
Date: 9 Mar 93 20:03:38 GMT
jack petrelli had some interesting comments on this post which deserve comment, even though his actual article hasn't gotten to where i can directly quote it yet.
he responded to my statement about "you are special and have value because everyone is special and has value" being meaningless with a charge of elitism. i dunno if i'm an elitist or not. i tend to agree with pirsig's view in _zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance_ that there are some things with more inherent value than other things. i think anyone who professes otherwise is fooling him/herself. it's this recognition of what pirsig calls "quality" that allows us to differentiate between, say, picasso and a highway billboard. or mamet and "three's company." to pretend that all things are equal has never appealed to me.
besides, the original point still stands. if all things are equally valuable by virtue of merely existing, what's the point of being valuable? the word loses meaning.
second, jack says that everything *will* be all right, if you wait long enough. well, yeah, maybe. but how does that help with the current situation? if i came up to you and said, "is it going to rain?" and you, using jack's logic (yes, it will rain, eventually), said "yes," i'd wander around all day with an umbrella wondering where the fuck you got your weather report from. knowing that some day in the future it will rain doesn't help me when i'm trying to figure out what to wear today.
and i still think that some situations don't turn out okay. my stepmother beat the living shit out of me several times a week for seven years, in the process convincing my father to disown me. that situation never turned out okay. she never realized the error of her ways, my father never realized what he threw away. yeah, i found ways to cope without going crazy, but it took years and the situation as resolved is less than ideal. certainly at the time it was all happening, it wasn't turning out all right.
it's cruel to say to a person in pain that everything will be okay. it's soothing and it makes them feel better, but people in intense emotional pain don't take the long view of things. they see *right now* and you have to keep that in mind when you try to help them. if they expect things to work out the way they want them to, and you encourage that expectation, then when events don't turn out as they wished, they're even less able to deal with it.
so if you really want to help a person in pain, help that person formulate responses to possible outcomes (good and bad). it takes a lot more time than simple reassurance but it's a lot less destructive in the long run.
--
sine | deb
reverting to her crisis line training...