Breathe: Getting Unstuck & Taking Responsibility

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Getting Unstuck & Taking Responsibility - Day 125

Today I had the opportunity to talk to three of my 7th grade students about why they were refusing to do their science lab work.

One student was very receptive to the conversation, as she consistently shows herself to be. She engages and nods and seems genuinely interested in learning how to regulate her emotions and take responsibility for herself so that she can be successful academically and in life.

One student was generally uninterested in engaging in conversation and kept her head in her hands most of the time. She was most interested in talking to a particular staff member who was not on campus at the time.

The third student went back and forth in her participation, and most of the time that she did participate she was very stuck in her way of thinking.

What came out of the conversation was that all three young ladies disliked another young lady in their class because this young lady apparently talks bad about them (something I did not know, because they never told me or another staff; but now I can support them all with this, so that is good). However, I always hear them talking bad about her, at which point obviously they are participating in the conflict, and also it is 3 against 1.

This was a really interesting conversation for me to be a part of especially in regards to the third young lady. I could really relate to her stubbornness. Basically the teacher had asked her to work in a group with this other student that she does not like. She refused to do so. Then the teacher asked her to work in the back of the classroom by herself. Again, she refused. And her answer to most of my questions was simply, "but I don't like her," although we were at least able to decipher that part of the reasoning behind this was that she is perceived as being different (the terms used by this young lady were more energetically charged and less objective, but I pointed out that basically what it comes down to is she is different).

So I was expressing to all three young ladies, and this young lady in particular, that:

Within the structure of the sentence "I don't like her," "I" is the subject, meaning the speaker, you, are choosing to dislike someone, you are actually the person in that sentence who has responsibility for its meaning, you are the person who is making that true, choosing not to like another person.
Refusing to work with someone that you do not like has the consequence in this case of keeping you behind in your education and at this school because by refusing to work with someone you do not like, you are refusing to work, and refusing to work means you will not get a grade to pass your class, which is a primary component of the review process for being re-integrated into the regular school system.

So basically here this young lady is punishing herself in an attempt to punish the other young lady. She is holding herself hostage to her own emotions and opinions and judgments. (Boy does that sound familiar.)

Just because someone talks badly about you, or does anything else to offend you, does not mean that you have to react in turn. Your reaction is your responsibility. Nobody is making you feel a certain way, and definitely nobody is making you act a certain way. Nobody is making you talk back. These are all your choices.

Here of course I made sure to mention that this is not easy! This is something adults deal with too. I shared that in fact I am dealing with something similar. But it doesn't make it any less true or any less a valuable lesson to learn as soon as possible.

So I will have to continue to monitor the interactions in this group of students to see how else I can support them to make positive pro-social choices that support themselves and others.

And I will have to continue to see myself in them, so that I can see myself in all the ways I have been refusing to see myself. I have been holding myself hostage to my own reactions. I mean I feel very very stuck, and very angry at myself, and very judgmental of myself, and stuck in reaction and projection of blame and judgment. And I am just sitting here thinking I don't know what else to do or how to get out of it. Well, that's fine. Maybe I don't know quite what to do, maybe it is new uncharted territory for me to actually work through a grudge. But that doesn't mean that no solution exists. In fact I have a pretty good idea of the solution, and I have all the tools, I just haven't figured out quite how to navigate this point. So I have to keep at it. I can't just give up and drift wherever I might without my own self direction, or, worse, direct myself as my reactions.

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I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take my reactions and extrapolate meaning and value judgments about another person based on the way I have reacted to them. Here I see that my reaction is mine and only speaks about me, not about the other person who has triggered the reaction. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really see, realize, understand, and then integrate / apply this as myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to denigrate another person within my mind because I am participating in negative reactive emotions and thoughts about them, where here it is as my reactions that I am denigrating them, and also because of my reactions that I continue to denigrate, because I blame them for my continued reaction, ie my continued suffering. "It is their fault I feel this way; if it weren't for them I would not feel this way."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to push another person down because I am in reactive energy in reaction to them, and so I believe I can make myself feel better by thinking, believing, and judging bad things about them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use various tactics to try and make myself feel better via a stance of superiority or trying to compensate for my inherent sense of inferiority.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to look down on another person from my pedestal of perfect knowledge and judgment, as if I am in a position to look down on another person and as if I am in a position to know better than another person. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create this separation between myself and another person, and also this separation within myself, as I am one with and equal to all as life, and so to reject any life is to reject myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to reject myself through judgments, blame, and denigration of another human being who is a reflection and part of myself, with whom I am a one and equal member of life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see a person who is different from me and to judge them negatively.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect another person to do things the way I would do them, and then judge them negatively if they don't, judging them negatively for being different from me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold myself hostage within my reactive state, holding onto all of my reactive energies of negativity and judgment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to blame another person for the way that I am allowing myself to feel, finding ways to blame another person as who they are that is making me react this way, like thinking "but, this happened!" or, "but, they said that!" as if this makes it okay and valid for me to react as I am reacting.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get stuck within reaction, so that I have felt really stuck and lost and like I don't know where to go or turn or what else to do.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to avoid a real conversation with myself, to be non-compliant, like the students who refuse to talk or who talk in circles, within the process of walking this point, to have the answers really within me, but to refuse to see those answers because I have refused to see myself, because I have refused to see who I really am within this reaction and to see how I am creating this reaction fully, and because I have refused to take responsibility for that which I have seen.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see and discover certain things about my reactivity but to not actually take responsibility by changing myself within those points. I realize that simply seeing does nothing if I continue to allow it; taking responsibility means actually changing.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to basically like drag my feet over to hear my lecture and listen and yeah yeah yeah okay whatever and just basically be looking away and trying to get out of the conversation, or being present for the conversation physically but not actually actively involved in the conversation with myself, so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to basically endure the time that it takes to walk this point without actually putting in the work, so that then this is like a chore and like something I am tired of doing, because here I have wasted a lot of time trying to do it without actually doing it, because I have not actually wanted to do it, because I have not wanted to have the necessary conversations with myself to see who I am, because I have not wanted to see myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to justify who I am as my reaction and as my behavior and thoughts within my reaction by thinking about what the other person has said or done "first," by projecting blame onto the other person that I think in someway validates or justifies who I am within this reaction.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think that it is only natural or all I can do to react when what has happened has happened, when another has said or done these things, that now the only option I have is to react this way.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see realize and understand how my reactions are an accumulation of what I have accepted and allowed for months and so yes, they will be difficult to walk through, yes, they will be difficult to see, but also yes, they are mine in their totality as what I accepted and allowed.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel like it shouldn't be my responsibility or it isn't fair for it to be my responsibility to take responsibility for things that I accepted and allowed before I even really understood what it meant to accept and allow.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get stuck here so that now, now that I do understand what it means to accept and allow, now that I do understand my responsibility, I am still continuing to abdicate responsibility, I am continuing to accept and allow reaction and thoughts and judgments, rather than taking my new understanding and using it to support myself to stop here, stop it now, let it continue no further and from here on to take absolute unconditional responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel overwhelmed at taking responsibility for myself because I continue to feel directionless and like this is all very new to me and I don't know how to jump over this wall or break it down, I don't know how to stop grudges. I realize this is a process and this pattern of grudge holding is one I have lived for probably at least 15 years, and so it will probably take me at least 2 years to really figure it out and walk through this point to completion and absolute stability. Here I begin, here I no longer accept or allow the virus to grow or fester as me. Here I am new, and again new in the next breath, until it is done and it is no longer a part of me.

I commit myself to continue to investigate these points, to not give up, to not just drift, to not allow myself to remain in reaction and move myself by and as my reaction. I commit myself to integrating and applying as myself what I now understand and what I come to understand, rather than remaining stuck in the past when I did not yet understand, stuck in memories, stuck in blame, stuck. I commit myself to figure it out because I am the only one who can figure it out. I commit myself to not accept or allow the question marks or the unknowns or the uncertainties about how to walk this point serve as road blocks are walls that prevent me from walking this point. I commit myself to figuring it out to support myself as one as equal as all as life as what is best for all.