Saturday, November 17, 2007

Psychiatric Help

Last night I dreamed that I checked myself into a treatment centre. It was late at night, after my fortieth birthday party, I had lost a couple of kids and it was too dark to find my way home. So I found my way back into the building, picking up birthday gifts and dirty socks along the way and stood in line for a brain scan. I was unclear on exactly why I needed to check out of life for a time, but felt somewhat confident that the scan would pick it up. My daughter was in line behind me, but she decided to lock herself into the bathroom for the night, and I was not sure why she needed the scan either.

Although I seem to thrive on a certain amount of chaos and insanity, I hate being confronted on things, details, or important perspectives that I have neglected to consider. I want to react with defensiveness, counter attack, self-protectiveness. Or alternately, its tempting to accept every bit of the criticism without editing for accuracy- to go the other extreme and kick your own self while youère down. Whenever someone rips off a strip, there is value in hearing it out and noting what hurts, what resonates, what you can challenge yourself to be more aware of in the future.

Its great to be appreciated and to get strokes, especially when it about something you value and want to be good at. But I suppose there is an equal and opposite that goes along with accepting compliments and apreciativeness. It hurts to have them pointed out and I can not pretend to like it, but dang-it-all, maturity is a noble goal........ plus defensiveness is only going to go so far, since I wonèt be able to pretend to have it all together for more than a few minutes at a time anyhow.

Its either that, or line up for a brain scan.

1 comment:

Roo said...

yeah. i hear ya joycie. love ya too.