Epic Fail Birthday

This has been one of those weeks when I feel like an epic failure.

Not that everything has gone wrong this week. Far from it; in fact, many good things have happened this week. What has me feeling like an epic failure is that something went wrong with one of my clients—like wrong—and she quit therapy abruptly, which usually causes me to seriously question if I am burnt out, if I am in need of a tune-up of my skills, or if I am just slowly losing my mojo as a therapeutic person.

Obviously, I cannot share any specifics of what happened, since I want to (and legally need to) respect my client’s privacy. Let it suffice to say that we had a major parting of the ways over a religious issue; my client is very conservative and is an activist in this area, and I am a committed progressive that does not believe that my morals should ever dictate what other people are allowed to do. We have laws to dictate behavior; after that, my morals should stop with me.

I have to admit that I view this person as an extremist. I say that because she holds an ethical viewpoint that labels anyone who disagrees with this viewpoint as immoral and of lower personal character.  I also view her as an extremist because she spouts “statistics” and “facts” without really examining if those statistics and facts meet the test of simple logic, which means her belief is unexamined and also unchallengeable.  After all, how do you challenge someone’s viewpoint once they have chosen to simply accept whatever data they are fed by their ‘leader’ without any critical thinking?

This is where I got into trouble with her.  She was sharing her views and statistics, and I lost my ability to smile and remain silent.  And of course, that loss is why I feel like an epic failure right now. I’m not okay with losing my patience with someone and arguing against their opinion. I’m not supposed to speak sternly to a client, ever. I’m not okay when I act like this whether it happens with clients or just with people in general. Sadly, I find myself behaving like this often enough for me to be embarrassed to admit to it.

It’s my birthday today, and I keep hoping that my increasing age will grant me greater amounts of patience, compassion, silence (oh how I could use some ability to remain silent!), and wisdom.  While I often get really nice presents for my birthday, God has not yet chosen to shower me with the gifts of patience, silence, and wisdom.  I don’t know that I actually need to be more compassionate that I am, but I often think that I would be better at tolerating extremist viewpoints or just generally stupid behaviors and viewpoints if I was more compassionate.

Then again, maybe if I didn’t give a damn that would help too.

But I digress.

I keep waiting to grow up, to become more of all the things I thought I would become with age. It isn’t happening, at least not the way I want it to.  I won’t deny that age has granted me a number of characteristics that I didn’t possess at 22. I told my oldest daughter not long ago that the greatest gift of aging is that you calm the hell down. Actually, I think I said it more colorfully than that. Nonetheless, I have calmed down a great deal since my 20s. I have also become a bit more comfortable with having others tell me that I have screwed up. Sometime in my 30s I decided that being wrong isn’t as horrible as we like to make it out to be.  Discovering you are wrong is embarrassing and it hurts your pride a little, but only just a little, as long as you don’t act like you’re being accused of a capital crime and start defending yourself as if your life was on the line. The truth is that being wrong represents an opportunity to learn from someone, to thank them for their honest feedback, and to prove yourself to be a responsible and accountable adult. Oh yeah…and you get to be certain, at least for a moment, that you are now just a little ‘righter’ than you were a minute ago. Nice, huh?

Growing older has also granted me the wisdom of realizing that things are never as great or as bad as they seem, and that I need to step back and let things unfold, instead of going straight into freak-out mode. I used to freak-out over the slightest little thing that didn’t go well…now I moan a little and grump a bit, and then get on with dealing with whatever it was that just happened. I suppose that this could come under the heading of ‘Calm the hell down’ but it also contains a great big piece of ‘Look for the good to show up, because God always sneaks in a little good into everything’. God has a funny habit of blessing me even in the midst of the ickier parts of life, which has led me to start looking for the hidden blessings in just about everything.

You know, considering just how much aging has blessed me with already, I guess that it’s reasonable to hope that sometime in the next 30 years, God will sneak a little patience, silence, and wisdom into this hard head of mine. Maybe He’ll drop a little more compassion into my heart just for fun as well.  In fact, perhaps this particular epic failure will contain the seeds of great things…a few more hidden blessings from God.

So for my birthday, it appears that God has gifted me with hope that I’m still growing up and growing wise, and that is a very nice present indeed. Well played, God.  Well played.

Watch Out For the Alligators!

Lately I have been busy.

Like, epic busy. Ridiculously busy. I have been so busy that I am on the precipice of becoming crazy busy, which means that I will be unkind, unloving, and unreasonable.

Perhaps that’s not fully the truth, because if you ask my husband I’ve already been unkind, unloving, and incredibly unreasonable, but not consistently.  Right now I am just unkind, unloving, and unreasonable in spurts, which thankfully my husband can bear for short periods of time.

Despite his patience with me, I hate when I get so busy that I’m not a nice lady anymore, especially when I am not nice to my own husband.

Back to my point. I’ve been really busy doing work for the Church. Not that I haven’t had work for my counseling practice; that’s always a thing. It’s just that I’ve been doing more work than normal for the Church.

I’d love to go into details because when I start listing all I’ve been doing, other people get that look on their face that says “Oh dear God…seriously? I’d EXPLODE if I had to do that! I’d lose my MIND if I had to do that!” and then, of course, they ask how the heck I’m doing all that.

I told my girlfriend that my work for the Church has me up to my a** in alligators. After listening to my frustration, she corrected me and told me that at this point, the alligators have taken up residence in my a** and I should start charging rent.

I like the way that lady thinks and have to admit that having alligators in my a** might explain why I have been unkind, unloving, and unreasonable.

Seriously, though, how did I get into this predicament?

I have had a number of people tell me that I need to learn to say NO when it comes to requests for assistance.

There is some wisdom in that, because being able to set boundaries is a huge part of healthy living.

The thing is that you don’t always get the opportunity to say no. What do you do when the cost of saying NO can be the integrity of the project that everyone is working to complete?  What do you do when no one asks if you would be willing to do something…and instead just tells you that they need you to do this?

What do you do when you feel like NO isn’t an option?

There is no easy answer to this question, but I am learning where the line is that demands that I say NO.

You see, I am one of those people who is really pleased with my own efficiency, my ability to get things done when things are on the line. I like to be the person that everyone relies on, the one that people turn to when the going gets tough.

There is nothing wrong with knowing what you are good at and making sure that others know what you are good at…on the other hand, it gives me a huge sense of pride to be doing all that I am doing, and a huge sense of martyrdom to be working as hard as I am working, and neither of those things is good for my ego.

It makes me an idiot to think I am more committed, more dedicated than everyone else in my position. It makes me haughty to believe that I am sacrificing myself for the sake of the group.  It makes me…unhealthy.

What the heck am I supposed to do?

I guess that I should break this into pieces and look at each piece.  Let’s start with “It makes me haughty to believe that I am sacrificing myself for the sake of the group.”

There is never a time when haughtiness, or extreme pride, is good.

Pride in itself is not bad. Pride is that thing that allows you to feel good about the things you do, what you are able to achieve and what your abilities allow you to contribute to the mix.  I like to be good at what I do, and being good at what I do allows me to be proud of myself.

Hello, self-esteem!

There is nothing wrong with self-esteem. Self-esteem, however, is based in the idea that I give the best that I can to any given task so that I can succeed as much as I am able.  It isn’t based in anything other than my own ability and my awareness that sometimes I am exactly what is needed to get things done.

On the other hand, extreme pride, or haughtiness, causes me to think that I am better than others.

What does that mean, to be “better than others”?

Is that a permanent thing, or am I only better than others at this particular moment?

When I’m better than others, does that mean something concrete or is it only relative to the people I’m working with at this moment, and the project I’m working on at this particular moment, and the needs of the group at this particular moment?

Are you seeing where I’m going here?  Being better than others is always relative to the project at hand, the people doing the work, and this particular moment.  In other words, I can be better than others at what we are doing right now but I cannot be better than others, period. I cannot excel past my brothers and sisters once I step outside this particular project and this particular moment.

Being ‘better than others’ is so limited to a specific place and time as to be meaningless.

Self-esteem, the awareness that I have done well when people were relying on me…self-esteem is just as time bound as haughtiness, but self-esteem’s location in time cannot erase the reality that I did the right thing at the right time for the people who relied on me.  The good thing about self-esteem is that it doesn’t rely on what others are doing, just on whether or not I fulfilled my task and helped the people that God set before me.

But what does that have to do with saying NO to too much work?

Well, if I need to be better than others, if I need to fulfill my haughty need for perfection and being ‘better-than’, there is no such thing as saying NO.  I can’t say NO, because I have to better-than-others and people who are better-than-others do not say NO. Only mere mortals say NO.

Self-esteem on the other hand lets me say NO when NO is the most reasonable answer. Self-esteem lets me say NO when I am not able to fulfill the task in a way that will be satisfying to everyone involved. You see, self-esteem doesn’t like to fail any more than haughtiness does, but self-esteem will admit when the job is too big or too difficult or beyond our abilities right now…because self-esteem can say “I can do a lot but there is no way that I can do this thing you are asking” and not feel like it has lost anything. Haughtiness and extreme pride need to be the best every time, all the time, and there is no space for NO there.

The last three months has been a lesson for me. I can do way more than I thought I could, so much more than I thought I could. I can be busier than is good for me for extended periods of time and not fail. On the other hand, it has also taught me that my self-esteem is much stronger than I thought it was and my self-esteem is ready to say Enough!!! and slow things down.  It’s nice to be efficient and it’s nice to be relied upon, but I have no interest in letting myself buy into the bull poop that haughtiness would like to sell me.

I guess what I want to tell you is that there is a fine line between self-esteem and haughtiness and that only YOU can determine where that line is. Only YOU can figure out where the line is between being healthy and being pride-filled, and that means that no one else can tell you when to say NO.

It is only January 13 and I have run into my limits.  Admitting those limits, as much as it will chap my behind, can only be a good thing.

This year my resolution is to stay with self-esteem and kick haughtiness to the curb.

I’ll let you know how I’m doing with this NO thing in the coming weeks. I pray that my ego gets out of the way and lets my self-esteem have a breather.

Here’s to health in the New Year!!