It took me a bit by surprise because their usual statement is something along the lines of stating that they don't understand why some people just don't do this thing that they have expected them to do, or that they do for / to others. And then in this instance here they were acknowledging that there might actually be an alternative reason for what they have observed, beyond what they know or understand.
And this was pretty cool! I mean I have done this a lot too. "I don't understand why some people do/don't...!"
Well isn't the answer in the statement? I don't understand. I don't have the answer. There is an answer, and I do not have it, I do not understand it. So why do I judge? Why do I expect other people to be like me? Why do I expect other people to do what I would do? Why do I reject things I don't understand as being "foreign" or "confusing" or "I don't get it" or "I don't know what to do with that"? Why do I believe that if I don't understand another person, there must be something somehow wrong with them? Why do I assume that all behavior should be obvious as the reasoning behind it? Why do I believe that if another person behaves differently than how I would behave, there must be something wrong with them / they are wrong?
This is coming up for me some now at work too. There are some behaviors with which I am quite unfamiliar among these students. Fighting, for example, or threats to fight or talking about fighting. I don't get it. Or I haven't. I am starting to understand it more, as I am allowing myself to maintain stability instead of retreating into excuses when I meet something I do not understand. I am starting to understand the mind systems and beliefs and examples and life experiences that support a person in desiring to fight. And in increasing my understanding of this, I am increasing my ability to support the students.
The same then too would go for self injury. Throughout my life I have been more aware than some of what peoples' reactions or opinions are to and of self injury. There are many people who don't "get it" or understand it, and they leave it at that. It's scary. I mean when we don't understand something, we sometimes react in fear. We resist trying to understand it, perhaps because we are afraid of what the actual reason might be, we are afraid of what is behind the behavior, of what would make a person behave "that way." And self injury is a topic that can be very difficult to understand if one has not encountered it much, or if one continually resists understanding it.
Neither self injury nor fighting are "valid" ways of dealing with "problems" or taking responsibility for oneself. They are both an abdication of self responsibility. But that doesn't mean they don't serve a function. They are "maladaptive" behaviors which serve some function, some purpose, some gain or avoidance. So the point is to determine the function, the why, and to figure out a functionally alternative behavior, and also to provide the tools to have needs met functionally and appropriately.
So for example, when I was self injurious I wrote a lot, but very rarely in my writing did I take responsibility for myself or discover strategies to support myself or learn anything really about myself. I defined myself as and through my emotions, and the writing was a real-ease of those emotions, just as was the self injury. So I did not have the tools at that point to support myself functionally. I chose to engage in behaviors that were not adaptive, but they still served the function of releasing some of the tension that had built up in me and giving me some sense of control over myself and my life, even if it was false.
The same is true for eating disorders. I engaged in anorectic patterns of eating and exercise for a period in high school in large part to try and gain control in my life. But actually I had absolutely no control once I handed the reins over to the eating disorder. And the eating disorder maintained control within my mind for years and years after I stopped engaging so heavily in the behavior. In fact the programs I installed in myself during that time still have control over me in many ways, when I look in the mirror, when I feel anxious and guilty about what I eat, when I shop at the grocery store, etc. But, at the time, in both instances, I thought I was gaining something.
And so the same is true then with fighting. Something is gained there. A sense of control and power. A sense of admiration and respect from peers. Entertainment. A belief that it is how problems are solved. I don't know, it could be any of these, and it could be much more. I still have a lot to learn about it. But I cannot just simply say "I don't understand" and leave it at that.
It's like the students here who for almost every academic question they get asked, the answer is "I don't know" and that's the end of it. Well, that's okay, you don't have to know. But you can try to find out. You can consider. You can come up with an idea, a suggestion, a possibility. And then you can get feedback, and you can learn, and as you do this, you can build trust in yourself to actually be able to know.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to meet an unknown entity and react as thinking "I don't understand."
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have the thought "I don't understand" be an end point rather than a start in seeking understanding.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to by default say "I don't understand" or "I don't get it" or "I don't know" when I meet an unknown, rather than stopping, breathing, and seeing if there is anything there that I do understand, or if there is anything there that I can figure out.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to meet an unknown entity and react in fear of that unknown, and also dislike for the fact that I do not know -- because I want to be smart -- and within this retreat from the question, answering simply that I do not understand.
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see realize and understand that every behavior has a function or a reason, that there is a reason for everything, and that it can be understood.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to assume that there must be something wrong with the thing that I do not understand, that if there was nothing wrong with it then obviously I would understand it, so since I don't understand it, there must be something wrong with it, not realizing that I do not understand everything, and that there are experiences I have not shared with others, and that there are entities I've not yet met, and so it is up to me to come to understand these things, not up to these things to stop existing so as to satisfy and appease my desire to always understand.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see a lack of understanding as an opportunity to learn and grow and expand myself.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist things that I do not know or understand because I fear them.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist understanding why kids would want to fight each other or make violent threats toward each other where my fear comes not really from the fighting and threatening but from the lack of understanding.
When and as I see myself reacting to an unknown entity with an attitude / energetic experience of "I don't know" or "I don't get it" or "I don't understand," I stop and I breathe. I ask myself if I might actually understand more than I realize. I realize that I do not need to be afraid of what I do not know, because here it is, existing within and as reality, already here, and so therefore not scary, because it is here already. I realize that what I fear is my lack of understanding, not the topic I do not understand. I realize that as I begin to investigate topics I do not understand, my fear and resistance dissipates, because I come to see and realize that I can understand. So I commit myself to seeing these instances as opportunities to learn and to push through this point of resistance to unknowns. I commit myself to remaining stable within and as myself, within this pushing myself to stand clear no matter what unknowns I might encounter, ready to observe and learn and seek out understanding. I commit myself to expanding my understanding rather than retreating and resisting in fear. I commit myself also to continuing to understand those behaviors which remain elusive to me at work so that I can best support the students as one and equal to and as myself as life as our experiences as living beings, as what is best for all.
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