Adapting to Culture, Fear, and Self-Doubt - Day 117

Day 2 at my new job. Mostly what I have seen in myself is that there are a lot of uncertainties in my job description and what changes are going to be implemented in the culture of the school. But the old culture still remains, in some ways residual, in some ways full-force. And so I have created a paranoia and pressure within myself that I am supposed to meet some expectations of other older staff, believing that they are expecting me to do things the way they have been doing things. So basically rather than being an absolute point of support for the students, I have slipped into the militaristic culture I have observed, where twice today I said things to my students that were not self honest but was basically just me reacting to my paranoia and copying what I had observed in some of the old staff.

I also see that I am afraid and resistant of getting to know the students for various reasons. The cool thing is that it's only day 2 and I've actually gotten to know some of the students pretty well for it only being 2 days and considering that I've had these fears I've allowed to limit me. But today I am writing to clear some of those fears and then will see how tomorrow goes, and continue to clear fears and resistances more if I see that I have to.

This job will work if I make it work! Arriving early tomorrow before work to meet with the other new therapeutic intervention treatment team staff.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fall in line with the militaristic culture of my environment simply because it seems like all there is for me to observe.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel unsure and uncertain within and as myself as my job performance such that I look to others to set an example for who I am to be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be paranoid within my mind that other staff are watching me and expecting me to do certain things, the way they do these things -- things they have never indicated verbally that I should do -- and so to react to that paranoia / pressure by behaving in the ways that I have observed from those staff.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to direct myself not from a place of self honesty and self responsibility as the decisions I make as what I know is what is best for all, or what I know is supportive of the students, instead sometimes moving myself by this paranoia and sense of pressure where I do or say something and then immediately feel quite "gross" because it just didn't feel right and I know it was not self honest and I know it was not supportive and I know that it is absolutely not what I want to do, even if it is what I am supposed to do for money.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to interact with the students in a negative way at all, because I have not interacted with them very much so far, and so any negative interaction sets a precedent for them to expect this from me and not trust me to actually practically support them but to only beat them down and humiliate them as has been the culture thus far that they are used to.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to interact with these students in any way that is not positive and supportive and respectful of them as individual human beings, one and equal as life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to slip into the culture of my environment.

I realize that I and other new staff have been brought in to change this culture. I realize that my specific job description is not very clear to anyone. I realize that my primary goal right now is to get to know these students and let them get to know me, and to recognize and praise their strengths, and give them practical solutions for areas of concern, and encourage them to take responsibility for themselves. I realize I am also here to observe the current staff and notice strengths and areas of concern so as to support the guidance of the changes within the staff, which will change the culture, which will change the students.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear and resist getting to know the students because I fear their anger or behaviors, within this fearing that something might happen that I won't know how to handle.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see other new staff relating to the students and then turning inward and doubting myself in self judgment and back chat about who I am and if I can even do this job, rather than looking at what they are doing and maybe talking to them about how they are starting to get to know the students and how they are breaking down the defenses that many of the students already have up.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I do or will not know how to handle a certain crisis within a student's experience, within this reflecting on my own teenage years wherein I basically did everything I was supposed to and never got in trouble, and so I believe that I cannot relate to these students.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand that I can relate to anyone and everyone on some level, on the basis of being human, on the basis of understanding through my own experience what it means to be human in this world.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand that I can relate to anyone and everyone through getting to know them and building a practical equal and one relationship with them, and that this takes time and consistency.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to doubt myself wherein I fear what the students might think or say about me behind my back, or to my face, where within this I want them to see me as "cool," and so already see myself as inferior, as is my default perception of myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, when I judge and doubt myself in social contexts, usually withdraw and go further into my mind.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to care what these kids think of me -- which could change depending on very many variables -- rather than caring what I think about myself in self honesty and who I am within this job and these relationships.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to by default place myself as inferior where when I was younger I always thought that this was because I knew so many people who were older than me and so I thought since they were older they were of course smarter and better and more mature and therefore superior, but as I have now grown older I have seen myself do this still with people my own age or even younger than me, sometimes much younger such as with these students. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to move myself by memories of who I thought I was in school in the social hierarchies so that now when I see jr high or high school age kids who, when I was in school I would have identified as "cool," now still I feel intimidated by them or still see them as "cool" and "better" and "superior" as my initial reaction to them from which I move myself.

I realize that already on day 2 I am getting to know these students better and starting to see them for who they are -- a person -- rather than as my initial impression of them -- an image attached to value judgments. So already through this job I am breaking down this dynamic of myself as inferior by default.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel self conscious again because I want these students to see me as "cool" and so if I feel like my skin is "bad" because of blemishes or if I feel bloated or if I think I have sweat showing through my shirt in my underarms, I become self conscious and focused on these aspects of myself, fearing and believing that the students are judging me, where here really I am only judging myself, because actually when I was their age I probably would have thought someone like me was really cool no matter what just by virtue of being a little bit older than me, and either way it doesn't matter because I am here to support the students unconditionally.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get caught up in my own self judgments about my appearance within this believing that these aspects of myself somehow limit my ability to do my job well, where within this preoccupation with these self judgments I am distracting myself from doing my job, so it is the self judgments themselves which are limiting me, not the topics of the judgment, which simply are within the physical and do not hinder my job whatsoever.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to slip into self doubt and self judgment wherein I am not supporting myself and therefore not supporting the students because I am distracted within and as my own mind systems.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I can't or won't or don't understand these students in terms of their backgrounds and who they are and why, or their interests, their interests in fighting and violence and drug use, their seeming lack of interest in education.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see something I do not understand and to react negatively to that, rather than simply taking steps to learn and understand, because here it is, it exists, so there is probably something to understand about it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make assumptions about the students and their backgrounds, within this making assumptions about who they are, or making assumptions about what their family is like, etc., rather than simply being here in each moment with them and with myself, getting to know them and experiencing their day with them, supporting them through the school day to be the best that they can be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge the students based on what limited information I have on them, which for most of them simply consists of the fact that they are enrolled at this particular school for students who have been expelled from regular school programs, not realizing that students get expelled for really fucking stupid shit sometimes, and it doesn't mean they are "bad" and it doesn't mean it is "who they are," it is simply something they did. So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to first judge the students and make assumptions about them and to then move myself from a fear based reaction to these judgments and assumptions rather than letting go of the reactions and judgments and all that other shit that's standing between us and simply get to know this other person as one and equal to and as myself, as life, as what is best for all.


So when and as I see myself fearing or resisting getting to know the students, I stop and I breathe. I realize that is all that is really required of me in my job, and that the primary way I can support the students is by showing them respect and being a positive example of self honesty and self responsibility, so that I am a person they in turn respect, and so that I can share with them perspectives that might assist and support them in achieving success in their education as well as their lives in general. I commit myself to taking a deep breath, checking in with myself, and then engaging with the students in whatever way I can. I realize relationships take time to develop. I also realize I am "the adult" in this situation, and so from the students' perspective I am probably the one who has to take these first steps. I realize already on my second day that when I am able to engage with the students and show them that I am trustworthy, they will come to me for support, and from there we are able to effect change. So I commit myself to realizing my position within my job, within this school, as an adult, and as an individual who is standing for oneness and equality as what is best for all, and within this I commit myself to walking through my fears and resistances and getting to know each of these students to the absolute best of my abilities.

When and as I see myself feeling paranoid and pressure to behave a certain way because of judgments I have projected onto other staff in terms of fitting in with the old culture of the school, I stop and I breathe. I realize I am here to change the culture. I realize it is early in this process. I realize that I cannot support these students if I am shouting at them about things that don't matter for no reason, and not explaining my reasoning, and not treating them with respect. I commit myself to catch myself before I slip into the persona of this old culture. I commit myself to resist this, and push forward to that which I have resisted in terms of really getting to know the students. I realize this is what I really want anyway, regardless of my job description: to practically support the students in respect as one and equal as life as what is best for all. So I commit myself to watching myself in this paranoia and sense of pressure and I commit myself to maintaining positive and supportive interactions with the students. I commit myself also to continuing to meet with the other therapeutic staff to discuss the changes that need to be made, and being that change, and making that change, because it is what we are here to do, even if the ball has kind of been dropped by the people who hired us in the first place. It can and will still be done, we do not have to fail unless we let ourselves, in which case we will be failing the students, and we could never expect them not to fail themselves.