"The emotional brain...

...loves the status quo."

Have taken so many giant leaps forward, but seem to be right where I've always been - seeing the best path forward, yet not taking it.  Is that nuts?

No, it's normal.  Because our emotional brain - the part of our thinking with the greatest amount of clout over what we DO v. what we say we intend - loves the status quo.  

Here's a disturbing thought - my sense of status quo was forged in the heat of a family largely off-track on their own & totally off the rails when it came to me, the youngest.  I grew up in an inverted family culture - too complex to explain, too icky to want to.  Suffice it to say that what most people put first, we put last & vice versa.  Abberation was my norm, it IS the set point my emotional brain keeps trying to protect.  Gadzooks!

Over the past 39 years, I have loaded my brain with reasonable, logical, insightful ways to approach life & living, yet still I struggle more than I succeed.  Small wonder.  

Our thinking brain can expand to accept endless reams of information, to discern which bits are worth remembering & which deserve being tossed into a virtual dust bin.  It makes us paragons of an educable being.  

The same cannot be said for our emotional brain.  Just as our physical body strives mightily to maintain a set weight point, so does our emotional brain.  No matter how much we ingest in the way of forward-moving knowledge, our emotional brain will strive - often mightily - to keep us right where we are.

At this point, there's not much, if anything, I can do solo to turn wretched life patterns around.  Read all the books, nailed down the data, but am not succeeding in getting my emotions out of the way.  .  

On the one hand, it makes NO sense to me to know a best path forward & not take it.  But that's what I do.  Friends seek to placate me, saying, "Oh, that's just human nature."  Perhaps - but that doesn't make it less dumb.  At least it doesn't to me.

I've had my laptop for over a year.  Haven't used it.

Know that a tidy house will help me feel stronger.  It's as big a mess as ever.

Haven't submitted billing for a grannie client in over six weeks.  What's that about??

My 2012 "State of the Human" letter has now lapped seriously into 2013.

Am not self-flagellating.  It's just that I've gone as far as I can on my own.  Proud of all I've achieved over the past 39 years, especially over the past 11.  But the reality is that my status quo-loving emotional brain is quick, clever & cunning.  And it thinks that it is HELPING me, which gives is extra incentive to keep things the way they've always been.  I've gotten far enough by hard work to realize the work I cannot do alone.

What to do next?  And will I do it??

Remembrance

In writing a post about my oldest brother, I mentioned having to accept how wildly different his experience of family & personal life events were from mine.  It is a lack of memories that leaves me no other option but to accept it because, as I wrote, "my brother remembers what he remembers."

It seemed strange, writing that, since it gave me such deep personal pain - the worst I've ever felt - when Mom used basically the same phrase in describing Mim.  

This dates back many years.  I was around 38 or 39, married for a couple years, if that.  As I had for what felt like eons, was once again endeavoring to get the three of us - Mom, Mim, myself - together with a family counselor to figure out better ways to communicate & connect. 

For all those years, Mim had pledged "maybe someday, but not now" we'd get the help I'd long advocated.  I finally started pressing when she at last - in her 40s - had her masters, a car of her own, a car of her own, and a traditional job of her own.  Mom brought up the proposed counseling with Mim, who brushed aside Mom's assertion that she at the least owed me a sense of loyalty for all I'd done for her over the years - according to Mom, she said that, yes,  I'd offered to do things for her, but that she had never taken me up on the offer.

When Mom told me that, I was stunned - and totally unprepared for what was about to come.

I asked her the logical (to me) question, "What did you say to that?"

"What could I say?" replied Mom.  "If that's what she remembers, that's what she remembers."

Almost word for word what I wrote about Peter.  So why was it so devastating when Mom said it & seemed so logical when I wrote it about him?  

Honestly, it happened so long ago, and I was such a different person, more dewy eyed & hopeful that the hopelessly broken could be miraculously fixed ~.

I asked Mom the logical (to me) question, "What did you say to that?"  

"Well," Mom answered, "If,, that's what she remembers, that's what she remembers."  

It crushed me at the time, hearing her say that, but here it is, over 20 years later, and I've written the same thing about Peter.  "He remembers what he remembers." 

They all did.  We all do,  all of  us human beings.  We remember what we remember.  Was interested, after writing the last post, that I mentioned that my brother remembers what he remembers – can be stunned by it, but there’s no way I can change it.

That phrase  - he remember what he remembers – kept niggling at me.  Why did it seem so familiar?  Oh, right – that was, word for word, what Mom said that after Mim said she "the past is the past & the family no longer exists as a unit."  When (in her recounting to me) Mom said I at least deserved some sense of loyalty because of all I'd done for her (Mim) over the years, my sis was reported as saying, "What things?  She (me) offered, but I never took her up on them."

Stunned, I asked Mom the logical (to me) question, "What did you say to that?"  

"Well," Mom answered, "If that's what she remembers, that's what she remembers."  

It crushed me at the time, hearing her say that, but here it is, over 20 years later, and I've written the same thing about Peter.  "He remembers what he remembers." 

They all did.  We all do,  all of  us human beings.  We remember what we remember.  

Not Ever.

Didn't get a lot of sleep last night, remembering a comment my brother made eons (okay, more than five and less than ten years) ago.  It wasn't distress that kept me awake, but a strange, unfamiliar sense of the utterly inexplicable.  

Had been skimming through Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness  (a remarkably good book with a remarkably bad title that doesn't begin to convey what it's about). There, in the margins, was a comment Peter made during an incredibly priceless hour of joint, sibling-to-sibling counseling.   I'd asked how it happened I'd missed a family meeting where he sought to make amends to Mim & Mom for wrongs he'd done to them.  

I learned about the meeting many years after it happened, after sharing with Mom my sadness he'd never shown any remorse for any of the things he'd done.  "Oh, yes, he did," Mom answered.  "No, I hoped he would, but he never has," I replied.   "Sure, he did," she reiterated. "Remember, that meeting with Mim & Peter when he told us how sorry he was for anything he'd done that might have hurt us."  

It was clear from her voice, her attitude that Mom clearly remembered this important get-together with her oldest child.  In spite of a sinking feeling in my stomach, I went on, "Mom, close your eyes.  Relax.  Remember the meeting with Peter.  Look around.  Am I there?" 

"Oh," she said, opening her eyes wide, "You're not!"

Until that moment, it had never dawned on her to notice that I wasn't included, that his words were just directed to the two of them. Intentionally, it turned out.

Sitting with the objective facilitator, I asked about that meeting.  Had I been asked & unavailable?

Reading those words written in the margin of a book, I was suddenly back in the moment,  seeing Peter's eyes open wide with surprise, as he replied, genuinely stumped over my question, "I had done things that hurt Mim & Mom.  I never did anything that injured you."

In his memory, he had virtually no contact with me.  Ever.  As he explained to the counselor, life in our household was so awful, he spent as much time as his friend's house as he could, as did both Mike & Mim; once they graduated from high school, each lit out on their own - he went off to college, Mike joined the Navy, and Mim became a live-in nanny.  So, he couldn't have harmed me, because he wasn't in my life.

That set me back on my heels, at least momentarily.  Gathering my stunned thoughts, I replied, "Yes, you did all leave after high school.  But you all came back.  Continually!"  

One look at his face & I could see - all those frustrating (to me) returns of the natives never happened.  That spoke volumes.  His answer was far more enlightening than he could ever have imagined.

It is impossible to have a conversation with someone who simply doesn't remember what happened.  This wasn't the sort of thing that one person remembers one way & another interpreted totally differently.   

All of our family's friends knew that Mike bunked at our house when he wasn't off on his world travels, just as he worked for Dad between overseas jaunts & for several years after he married.  They knew that Mim headed home when she had time off from her jobs, whether it was up the road or in Philadelphia where she was a housemother at Girard.  They knew that Peter stayed for months at a time at 4501 Woodland Road.  

Yes, they all lit out early in their adult lives, but they all came back.  But Peter remembered none of that.  To him, he'd left & never looked back, let alone returned.

That was what kept me awake all night;  not the thought, "How could he not remember?" but about how he was almost right - it wasn't that he wasn't in my life, but that I wasn't in his.  Ever.  

There's Something I Have To Tell You

It often amazes me how crucial life lessons are more likely to come from wretched events than from delightful moments.  Take, for example, a sensitive 1997 conversation I initiated with a key person in my life ~ ~ one I totally & completely gummed up, but yielded lessons that guide me to this day. 

Background:  There was a very sensitive topic involving money ~ one of the most touchy of all subjects under the face of the sun ~ and family.  Mega powder keg combination!  And I did what, it turns out, most people do.  I brought it up entirely in the wrong way, at the wrong time, in the wrong place.  sigh….

Afterward, clueless as to how it had all had fallen to pieces, I did what I’ve always done in that sort of situation – research what I could have, should have done differently.  Maybe I would have had the same result ~ an uproar that reverberates to this day –  had I known then what I know now, but at least I would have the comfort of knowing it had been approached with due delicacy & keener empathy. 

So, what did I learn?

Surprise!

To my surprise, I discovered that apparently a shocking number of people do exactly what I did – bring up intensely sensitive topics unannounced, at precisely the worst possible, most typically at a party or other social event.   Totally relate to that – brought it up, out of the blue, during a party.

Why do a stunning number of totally well-intentioned people bring topics they’d rather avoid altogether up in utterly inappropriate settings?  It’s simple – the other person, the one you’re terrified of upsetting but you feel needs to hear your message, is unable to get upset. 

Not that we think that outright.  We don’t say to ourselves, “I’ll bring this up at so & so’s birthday party because he won’t be able to go through the roof or attempt to box my ears.”  But deep down, it seems to be what we are subconsciously thinking.

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Mom & Dad were masters of delivering shocking news or asking massively delicate questions in ham-fisted, poorly timed, inappropriate settings.   They became so well known for it, my oldest brother, Peter, said he got to the point where he dreaded a dinner invitation from them, wondering what was going to come up. 

Frankly, there are some subjects that should never come up.  Peter & Pam certainly should have reconsidered inviting his teen-aged baby sister (me) out to Pittsburgh to help them with a move, during which – at dinner in a Shadyside restaurant, over chocolate cream pie – Pam informed her adoring sister-in-law, that she was compelled to inform me of my latent lesbianism, which (as she explained) might go undetected in cloistered Bryn Athyn but would be picked up by predatory others when I went away to college. 

Yeah, that’s the sort of thing you want to bring up over dessert. 

Am, to this, day proud that I kept my composure and calmly asked a couple questions.  Pam, what drew you to this interesting conclusion?  It was the only explanation she could come up with for why I didn’t date & hung out at the girls’ dorm. (In my high school, guys were notoriously bad about asking girls out AND everyone hung out at Glenn Hall).  Peter, what do you think? He agreed with Pam (the rat), 

Praise be, I was comfortable enough in my own skin (even at 17) to realize they were both crackers.   

Naturally, Dad & Mom compounded the situation by postponing their (naturally outraged) response, instead scheduling a dinner date at one of Peter & Pam’s favorite restaurants, with nary a mention of the incident or their reaction. 

Would Have, Should Have

I do not bring this up to pillory Peter & Pam & my parents, but because it turns out that what they did was what most people would have done.  Almost 25 years later, I did much the same in my communication debacle.

So, all that aside, what have I learned over the past 15+ years about better ways to bring up tough subjects without going into a nose dive?

The most important first thing to consider – is this sensitive situation genuinely  worth lifting up into an open issue?   Is there a potential positive outcome to talking about it, or would it just make you feel better?  One way to figure this out is to talk it over FIRST with a neutral person capable of a subjective viewpoint.  Friends are usually not a good choice, as they’re already rooting for you.  Over the years, I’ve sought insights from ministers & counselors, authors & online experts. 

With the $$ issue back in 1997, I turned to Mom & Mim, who were surprised I’d thought twice about it – bringing it up seemed to them like common sense, especially as it involved someone sniped quite a lot about the family tendency to kept their heads in the sand rather than deal with uncomfortable issues.  Still uncertain, I forged ahead.

Which brings up a second key point – pay attention to your own instincts.  If others give the go to bring up a delicate subject, but something deep inside keeps saying, “I don’t know….”, pay attention to that inner voice.  I thought mine was just trying to duck out of a possibly difficult moment.  No – it knew better.

Perhaps THE most important point – pick the right time & place.  Not at a party.  The best approach is to let the person know you have something important to discuss, then set up a time & place to do just that.  Do not, whatever you do, get sucked into talking about it before the set time & place.  No matter what they say or how plaintively they cajole, just say, “I’ll tell you about it then.” 

Sensitive discussions are never easy.  It is human nature to avoid them as much as possible.  Sometimes, we end up delaying them due to factors outside of our control.  Sometimes, it’s due to avoidance.  Some discussions should never happen - period.  Mine, the one I totally gummed up, was an important one that went terribly wrong due to my bungling – wrong time, wrong place, wrong way.

No Easy Answers

I wish that I could give good advice on how to bring up difficult topics, how to had a tough conversation about a sensitive subject.  If attempts to bring up powder keg topics have blown up in your face, there’s help out yonder.  Check out the internet, look for books like Charles Foster’s  There’s Something I Have to Tell You – how to communicate difficult news in tough situations,” talk to personal communications counselor.  Do it now, before another potentially explosive situation comes up. 

And remember – if there are times you have to bring up tough topics with others, there are times they have to do the same with you.  Be willing to listen & discuss, realize that feeling might get heated but that doesn’t mean they need to explode, don’t fly off at the handle or turn it into an opportunity to unload a lifetime of unacknowledged slights & injuries.  And be willing, if it doesn’t go well, to let the other person off the hook.  

If you can do that, you deserve 5 gold stars for a core life lesson learned!