Pretty Real Behind the Veil

Ok, this entry is not about a particular entry in my art journal, but my thoughts about what I’m learning about myself in the process today.  The pages are me getting down visual representations of thoughts and feelings at a given time, sometimes in a given moment.  It doesn’t even matter for me if that moment has passed in terms of time, because the image flashing in my mind’s eye brings me back vividly to the memory and how I felt and thought at that time quite easily.  What is helpful about bringing those images out of my mind and onto paper, is that looking at that page allows me to reflect on those thoughts and feelings in a different way, and I find myself trying to understand both where I was coming from and what I can learn from that, to shape my perspective and expand my own toolkit of life.

So I have been thinking about the journal page that I posted yesterday, and trying to decide what I was trying to tell myself.  The facts are that information/instruction/treatment was provided to me in a form that I was supposed to rely upon, and that information was wrong.  Where I have been feeling stuck is that the survival adaptation part of my brain is screaming that the rules as I understood them and used to keep myself safe were wrong.  Relying on a pure left-brain approach to the problem to understand and apply generally accepted rules for living, interpreting facts, acting in reliance upon professionals based on a set of assumed criteria, and even the criteria for extending trust and having confidence about what they provide—is broken.  What I have been feeling unsure about is what is exactly broken, and more specifically, how can I feel safe and confident to go back out into the world and be effective as a whole individual?  And what have I actually been doing as a process to achieve that?

Well, first was recognizing that something was clearly broken somewhere, based on the facts.  Something was wrong, I went to doctors of various kinds that I was sent to as recognized and recommended experts, in many cases specialists in particular kinds of problems, sometimes generically expert, like my primary care physician, Dr. Clark, and the outcome of all of the time, money, surgeries, treatments, drugs, tests, evaluations, was that the truth of what was wrong with me was missed-repeatedly and consistently by almost every single doctor.  I believe that I am developing, through my journaling, what was missing, and I have some the beginning of some ideas about how to address that going forward.

First, I’m looking at my process for problem-solving when faced with a new situation/set of facts and the need to adapt and survive.  Before I know that I’m dealing with something new that I don’t already understand, and that adapting to that new reality is necessary for survival, I have probably been feeling ill-at-ease in some hazy amorphous fashion, without a clear sense of what is underlying these feelings.  I’m distressed and uncomfortable, but I don’t know why.  Before I begin to feel that way, I’ve probably been working mostly in a left-brain sense with a set of rules that I apply to my situation, and for the most part, the parameters that I am relying upon seem to be working, and my right-brain function is something that I do for personal pleasure and balance.  The left brain world is a predictable and safe world because things fit together in logical, predictable ways, over and over again. 

Background

I don’t know if I ever was attracted to pure left-brain modes of thinking and living.  If I was, I can’t remember it.  I don’t know if I was pushed into right brain perspectives by exposure to life being inherently unpredictable and unsafe since an early age (even predating the fall at 5 years old, there was serious illness requiring hospitalization even before that), or to a parent’s perception that life was this way because they grew up with a “rulebook of life” that taught them that life could be devastatingly unpredictable and unfair, and survival required a great deal more than what could be extrapolated from objective analysis based on generally accepted facts.  I do know that what most distinguishes my parents from one another and why their marriage was doomed from the outset are how polarized they are in this regard. 

My mother grew up in a somewhat parallel world to me (perhaps to a lesser degree), where the generally accepted rulebook of life and assumptions that people generally relied upon to survive and prosper did not work in her childhood.  She had a very abusive father who maliciously hurt his wife, children, grandchildren, and others, and a mother who was not capable of protecting herself or her children.  I think she spent most of her life struggling with how to reconcile that, and her own self-esteem suffered as a consequence.  I feel certain that at least one of her assumptions was that she was supposed to be able to see the world and function in the world as if the standard rulebook applied to her, yet she knew that things didn’t work that way in reality, though the enforceable rule was that one was never to air one’s dirty laundry in public, so secrets were kept and as a child, predictably, she internalized a sense of failure.  This approach, however, has proven untenable for her, and in order to survive has repeatedly had to adopt more right-brain approaches to problem solving in order to survive.  The emotional conflict and the underlying damage to self esteem of trying to apply a “round peg” set of assumptions and rules to her “square peg” reality that she knew intuitively would work has been profound.  The irony of it all is that most of the time she devalues in herself what are strengths that actually positively set her apart in an evolutionary sense (in my opinion), and focuses on the damage that actually resulted from trying to “fit in.”

My father’s childhood was the opposite.  Life was uncomplicated and practical, and the rules that he learned served him well when he only had to serve his own needs.  Life was very much A + B + C = D, and when something or people came into his life that didn’t fit that in a way that interfered with his ability to enjoy living in his A + B + C = D rulebook, he would remove them and replace with what did fit.   As a child, he was not prepared to understand and cope with complications outside of that, and the choices that he has made have been to eliminate them by removing them from his path, and continuing on his journey.  Revisiting those choices is not something that he has ever been willing to do, I think because it has never been necessary in order for him to survive and prosper.

Had I been more like my father, I could have sidestepped some of the complications (and complicating people) that came along, but not most of them.  Some I simply could not have avoided, like being molested by my grandfather, being battered by my father, the accident at 5 and the long history of illnesses, my parents’ marriage breaking apart and being abandoned physically by the age of 12, emotionally and physically neglected long before that, were all things that I could not adapt to on my own during that time.  I could not protect myself then, though I made immature attempts to find creative solutions on my own at the time.  It’s been helpful for me to reflect on the various ways that my siblings and I have developed our own perspectives, and how we apply them to our present-day realities.  Each has developed strengths around resilience, adaptability and creativity in general, though each of us, including myself, continue to struggle with significantly low self esteem, and varying degrees of emotional dysfunction that pop up at various times, most notably during periods of high stress and stressful familial interaction of some kind (death in the family, family conflict, celebratory family gatherings, etc.).  And how we cope with instability varies, as well.

Present Situation

My dilemma is that I have discovered that I have relied, to my detriment, on the expert advise and treatment by a whole series of doctors over many years, who repeatedly and egregiously got it very badly wrong, and I will suffer the consequences the rest of my life.  The little girl/inner child in me is screaming at me that it is my fault because no one can really be trusted, and while that perspective may be valid for a child living in an environment where those that are entrusted with their protection are the ones that she needed protection from, it is not useful for this adult, and doesn’t improve my chances for survival, much less prosperity.  I have to have a basis for establishing trust and reliance upon others, because there will be times when I will need it.  In discussing this problem recently, I was advised that even if a doctor in the future might be wrong, that I should trust that they were doing the best that they could do, and that should help me to feel better/safe/etc.  That should be my rule.  My reply was, that this rule would not work for me, though I needed time to sort out the problem with the rule.  I only knew that it wouldn’t work for me, because it wouldn’t enable me to feel safe.  It may work for others in typical life situations, but my life is anything but typical. 

I may have developed some insight into how to formulate a better rule.  While what they got wrong can now be recognized as objective facts, in order to get to these objective facts (i.e., what was the wrong answer and what was the right answer), a specialized set of capabilities were necessary, along with a willingness by the person possessing them to utilize them in a particular way in order to arrive at the answer.  The capabilities require significant left-brain/right-brain integration in problem-solving abilities, along with a strong ability to assess when and how to apply them.  The professionals that I have maintained trust with, were those who had these capabilities and willingness and desire to apply them in their work with me.  Unfortunately, the majority of health care and related providers tend to be more heavily on the left-brain end of the spectrum, and atypical, unpredictable, unusual explanations for problems are not likely to be recognized or understood by them.  Most are less intuitive, less creative, and not likely to perceive or intuit things that are rare and occasionally unique.  They may not be stimulated by things that are unpredictable and, like my father, may be conditioned to sidestep complications by abdicating care-giving responsibility if they cannot explain the situation with logical, known scenarios that they were trained to treat in a measurable, predictable manner. 

Without exception, this accounts for every single professional that I can recall ever working with about my health problems, who both got it wrong AND lost my trust.  What I recognize sets apart those that I do trust, even if they haven’t always gotten it right, were that they are both professionals who recognize that whatever list of explanations about a situation they have been trained to understand and help to develop solutions for, there are always other possible explanations and solutions, that they just don’t know yet, and they don’t put their egos in between what they have previously understood as the realm of possibility and likelihood, and what might actually be the truth of the matter.  They both demonstrate strong L-/R-brain integration, a perpetual “on-the-job training” mentality, keep their egos in an appropriate place, and respect that my information and interpretation of the facts that I suggest may be relevant should be approached with a view that any or all of them may in fact be relevant, and should be integrated with their accumulated scientific knowledge and expertise to collectively arrive at the truth as it unfolds, allow those aha! moments to happen, not take it personally, and develop a plan that addresses the reality, however novel it might be to them. 

In order for me to have confidence and trust in that professional, I must know that they are able and willing to listen to me and recognize when they need to shift from left-brain predictable approaches to incorporate right-brain creativity to the problem-solving process.  This is when I need them to stop behaving like a “deaf man” by filtering what I tell them through what are predictable explanations and dismissing or ignoring what doesn’t fit (declaring that it’s all in my head and I need psychiatric treatment because I’m deranged).  They should not act like one of the “blind men and the elephant” but should rather open their eyes and try their best to see the whole picture.  The professional who is willing and able to do this on the intake end, and capable of integrating this information with the scientific knowledge and skills that they have acquired and does this, is someone who, if that person does their best, then that is good enough, even if they get it wrong, because they took everything that could be known by them and did their best with the capabilities that they had, and then I will accept what they provide, even when they were wrong.

And frankly, this is the kind of people that I expect to be survive along with the rest of those who will be perpetuated down the evolutionary timeline.  That, at least, is something that I can predict with a high degree of certitude, and, in my opinion, as it should be.  Adapt or die, or if you won’t/can’t adapt and don’t die, expect to be really miserable if you ever encounter something new that you can’t just sidestep.  For me, I will hang onto my growing set of survival skills; they seem to continue to serve me often and well.