A Rose By Any Other Name

I was gently taken to task several weeks ago by a friend who had been avoiding my blog because of the title.  She was afraid that it would be all anger and sarcasm which was something she didn't really want invited into her life.  She gently suggested that maybe it was time in my journey to perhaps change the name of my blog, because she found my title and content so energetically counter-intuitive.  Basically she felt I was a nice person with a not very nice name for my musings and it gave the wrong impression.  On one level she is correct, the current blog title might be better served by being changed to Dilettante At Large or something similar.

Her comments sent me to the dictionary to look up the meaning of "nice".  Agreeable, pleasing, accommodating (ok, this last one is a personal definition).  The title of the blog came during a difficult time of divorce, breast cancer and death of the father of my children and a bunch of other nasty things that caused a couple of friends to offer to do a black cloud exorcism for me.  I had moved through life trying to be agreeable, pleasing and accommodating, it just wasn't working.  I was tired of being nice and doing what others wanted or trying to live to someone else's desires.  Call it boundaries or setting limits (as a retired therapist I hate terms like boundaries and issues but that is a different story), but I think it is about having the confidence and the courage to say "no" or "no thank you".  I seemed to be really good about helping others define themselves and establish a life they wanted but no so good at helping myself do the same thing.  I'm not looking to pick a fight, but I am tired of colluding with others in my personal life regarding fictions of behavior, responsibility, and actions.  I think too often women have been taught to keep quiet, go along, be nice, accommodate.  We are rewarded for these appeasement behaviors and called nasty names when we say "no thank you or I don't think I agree with that",  bitch and ball breaker come to mind. 

I'm reminded of the Emperor has no clothes tale.  This idjit is parading down the street starkers and everyone is admiring his clothes except for the little boy that says "Look, the Emperor has no clothes."  Now I'm sure every woman in the crowd knew he didn't have any clothes on because woman are genetically designed with a clothes/shopping gene which notices these kinds of things, but they were to nice to say anything or didn't want to be called bad names for speaking up.  But the little boy, being a man in training, doesn't have to watch his mouth and probably grew up to be a gay male fashion designer since he actually noticed the emperor wasn't wearing anything.

 I am a huge fan of civility and wonder where its gone these days and I don't like the cult of rudeness that has grown up in social media and conversations, however, this doesn't mean I don't have voice and a backbone, and sometimes I'm tired of being nice - "Dude your naked!"

It's Official, I Am Retiring My License

This is the month that I have to renew my license with the Board of Behavioral Sciences if I intend to continue practicing as a Marriage and Family Therapist.  Actually, I haven't actively practiced in a couple of years.  I have all the continuing education required to renew - but it is time to face the fact that I'm just not going to practice as a MFT.  So I have sent in the application to retire my license and officially close that chapter of my life. 

I find that I have just gotten cranky about the whole formal process of therapy.  I think it has been regulated to the point of meaningless.  I think people can change, but it is a lot of hard work and it isn't done in a vacuum which is sort of what the therapeutic hour is.  Real change happens in the real world, the rough and tumble struggle of having a person hold our feet to the fire and having to really look in the mirror of life and see what we are doing to contribute to our own problems. I could probably hold forth on this for hours of boring reading and I certainly know that therapy is a complex process.  I think in some ways the practice of therapy has created a false sense of "getting better" or "the pretense of changing".  The excuse of  "I'm in therapy" is used as a rationale to inflict special needs and accommodations from others for our PITA behavior or the PITA behavior of our kids.  Now, this is not in reference to the heartbreaking and very real mental illnesses of Schizophrenia, etc.  This is the general everyday play nice with others type of stuff. We all have something that we bring to the table that is problematic in our lives, personality wise.  I deal with anxiety - I get it.

Having said this, I really value the training I received and the work that I did with others.  I learned a lot,  I love the work of Martin Seligman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the positive psychology movement.  But what I have also learned through my work and being a professional observer of human behavior some of the following:

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should
Yes it is important to learn to say please and thank you
If people worried less about how others were treating them and more about how they were treating others everyone would be happier
We need Miss Manners (see learning to say please and thank you)
It isn't all about us
"No" is a very important word
Self  Discipline is not a dirty phrase
Delayed gratification is a good thing if practiced in moderation
Integrity counts
Character counts (yes, if no one is looking it still counts)
Don't lie, truth is slippery enough
Take responsibility
We need to get off the couch
We need to have a hobby
We need to do something for others on a regular basis (visit a housebound friend, volunteer, etc)
We need to tell others that we love them, that they did a good thing, etc.
Create something of beauty for yourself and others (an apple pie will do, a picture, a hand knitted item)

Okay,  this list is just getting longer - life can sometimes be hard, very hard which is why we need to be kind, gentle and generous with each other.  In the meantime - I am going to go back to my knitting a life of meaning and joy.