The Whole Elephant

A few times in the last school year, someone (student or professor or course designer) has made reference to the six blind men from Indostan trying to describe an elephant.  You know how the parable goes - the man who felt the ear thought the elephant was a fan, the one feeling the leg thought it was like a tree, the one feeling the trunk thought it was like a snake, the one feeling the tusk thought the elephant was like a spear, the one feeling the side thought it was a wall, and the one at the tail thought it was like a rope. Everybody was right, but nobody was.  They argued over which of them was in the right - when if they had just realized that each of them was feeling a different part and that maybe they could collaborate and construct an overall mental picture (or switch positions so all could feel what the other one did), they might understand more about what an elephant was. 

The graduate journey has been like that lately.  As my skill level grows and my confidence expands, I am getting more of a 'big picture' of what this profession is all about. It involves so much more than just sitting across a desk from someone.  It includes things like community involvement, networking, continuing education (i.e., staying current), and a continual process of self-reflection and personal growth.  The more I learn, even though it sounds odd to say, the more I find both my confidence and my humility growing. I am adopting what some post-modernist thinkers have called a "beginner's mind." That is, I have never fully arrived; there is always something to learn, and my perspective might not be someone else's but holds no more merit than theirs.

Photo "African Elephant"
courtesy of africa at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

In the same way, new developments at my job have put me in a role where I am able to step back and get a glimpse of a bigger picture than I had before.  I have been asked to fill a team leader role, which puts me into discussions that I had not previously been privy to, at a level that I knew existed, but didn't have any experience (or very little) with.  The timing of this is quite good, because I have applied to fill that role for real, and I may be invited to an interview for the position sometime in the next month.  My experience in that role will stand me in good stead in the interview, I'm sure. Again, my beginner's mind comes to the forefront: I have adopted a teachable attitude, and that helps me to accept instruction without becoming offended. At the same time, I am also able to see how my increased influence can work toward helping more people at a time than I could have in my team member role (where it was one applicant at a time).  I can still DO that (when I have time) and I enjoy it, but as a team leader, I can see the effects of what I do in a more global sense of the ripple effect that my actions have.  I see my role as of a facilitator - someone who makes it easier for people to feel valued and to do their work unhindered.  If that happens, they can do more work in less time - and the whole team is able to help more people.

All of this (present situation) comes just barely 5 months after I was diagnosed with diabetes, a diagnosis which literally saved my life.  I cannot imagine myself ever being able to even attempt all of the above if I was still feeling the way I was six months ago: bone-tired, dragging myself around, and with aches and pains from a Body Mass Index that was approaching 50 (30 is considered obese). At the moment, it's just barely over 40, and on its way down.  But even before it started going down, I discovered that taking my medication, eating more healthily, and getting my blood sugar under control took away that fatigued feeling, controlled my appetite, and gave me more energy. This was even BEFORE I started becoming a bit more active (and only because I had more energy, not because I was trying to lose weight!) The weight coming off has been a happy side-effect.  (Okay ... I must admit that fitting into smaller clothes - and having people finally notice the difference - really feels good too...) 

But getting back to my original thought: lately, living and enjoying life - more and more in the last year or so - has just begun to make a lot more sense to me. I am noticing that I accept myself and my personality much better, that I am more at ease with being myself rather than doing that 'chameleon' thing that is so counter-productive, and that people can like me just the way I am without all of that panic, pretending, and posturing. I am starting to shed that "don't hurt me" approach to life, and I'm acting as if I have a say in how my life and my future turns out. Hm! And instead of getting locked in my own little silo of how I see the world, I am beginning to see the value in trying to see things from someone else's perspective, even if only to more fully understand (and maybe adapt) my own. (I wonder if that's called 'growing up.')  

The whole elephant is coming into focus. It's not just a fan, or a spear, or a snake, or a wall, or a tree, or a rope. It's starting to look more like an elephant.  And it's beautiful. 

Standing up

The last year or so - at least the non-employment part - has been devoted to finishing my first year of a 3.3-year online Master's program in Counselling, which is designed to be taken by people who are working full-time and can't take 2 years off to go back to school. It's been a time of great learning and stretching of opinions, beliefs, and skills to the point where I wonder how I managed to survive this many years without some of the things I have only learned in the last year.  The experience has been nothing less than transformational. In many ways, it has been like I was taking life sitting down ... and now I am starting to stand up.

The first half of the school year was more about learning how to write to the standards expected of a graduate student in psychology, and to how to think critically (not to criticize but to examine the evidence and form informed opinions) about what I was reading.  I learned that I had opinions and that I would not be judged for them as long as I could back them up with hard evidence.  I found my voice; I learned that in my writing, I could start standing up. 

Then came the hard stuff!  

In the next course on infusing culture into counselling, I learned about the various non-dominant groups in Canada. We discussed various races, sexual orientations, faiths/beliefs, and physcial / mental abilities ... and we learned something about what each group experiences as discrimination by the dominant (that is, white, male, Judeo-Christian, able-bodied, and heterosexual) group.  I learned that just because a group is fewer in population does not make it a minority. In many places in Canada, whites are in the minority but are still dominant in the culture of that society: they hold the power and the privilege that being white (and / or Christian, male, heterosexual) affords them.  The course challenged (and yes, changed) many of my long-held beliefs and prejudices, and highlighted for me the privileges from which I had benefited all my life and of which I had been unaware.  It gave me a new appreciation for the reasons why so many non-dominant groups seem to be so militant and vocal about their plights.  And it opened my eyes in particular to the Canadian cultural genocide committed throughout the 1930s into the latter part of the 20th century:  the residential school system.  I have rarely been as horrified as I was by reading first-hand accounts of what happened to attempt to rid Canadian society of what was considered to be "the Indian problem."  It was just like reading the diaries of those Jewish people, or Jewish sympathizers, or homosexuals, who were sent to the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Only ... it happened HERE.  In Canada.  That experience of learning in detail about these home-grown atrocities marked me forever.

Photo "Women Discussing Something Casually"
courtesy of stockimages at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

In the following courses on the more hands-on aspects of counselling, my practical skills were next to be targeted.  I learned that I already knew how to do what I would be doing for the rest of my professional life, but that I needed to be able to do it naturally and without having to stop and think about it.  The courses culminated in a three-week intensive face-to-face session in a city that was 3,000 miles away from my home, and at an altitude of over 3,000 feet above what I was used to living at.  I had my first taste of living on my own.  Parts of it were not too bad, and other parts (being away from my loved ones, for example) were abysmal.  Yet professionally, with practice at doing what I had wanted to do since the beginning, I was able to put the things I was learning into practice and watch myself not only do it, but do it well. My confidence grew in leaps and bounds.  Often I wanted to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming all of this!

But there was more; there IS more than just this one tiny piece of academia.  I have been learning some things about myself that I needed to learn, and that I have needed to learn for a very long time.  Some of these have been positive things about my own competencies and my own character - hence the increase in my confidence level especially over the last month. I have been learning that I have the right to stand up and to be counted among people whom I have just sat back and admired up until now.  It's a good feeling. It's new, and a bit strange perhaps, but it's good. 

And a few things that I have been learning about myself have been downright horrible.  These are painful lessons to be sure ... and things I will need to work on ... not just by myself but (I believe) they are things that will need to be addressed in therapy, since they are deeply ingrained in who I am, and in how I have come to define myself.  One of these things is my life-long terror of being abandoned, which has led me to become a chameleon with people, changing into the person I thought they wanted me to be, just so that they would like me. This has consistently had a domino effect on my relationships, because I can only sustain the chameleon colouring for so long. So, the pressure builds and builds as I deny my personhood and refrain from complaining so as to be around certain types of people, and then I explode! I therefore end up badly hurting their feelings when I overcompensate (in trying to practice self-care) to recover from the situation I created myself by just not being myself.  

That's just one of those things I am learning that will need to be addressed ... and changed. In a way, it is like I (because of fear) have been unable to stand up in the everyday situations of my life and relationships, and when I finally do stand up, it's suddenly, and without clear warning, and something (or someone) usually gets knocked down and could be irreparably damaged.  So I need help in not only standing up sooner in those situations, but in HOW to do that so that nobody gets hurt - including me.  

That's a lot of growing in just one year.  I know that in the year to come, I will grow even more, which I will need to do ... because after that, I will be starting to officially help people to find their own places of growth and healing.  It would kind of help to be able to do that from a place of mental wellness.  In essence, I need to learn how to stand up before I can sit down across from those who need help standing up themselves.