Calculation
I sat in the class listening to the teacher talk about Rorschach Tests, as well as the method of showing a picture and then asking the patient to tell a story based on the picture. The idea is to let the person's subconscious thoughts and feelings influence the response, to give a window into what they are really thinking or feeling, what is going on behind the facade that they put up.
It didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't. I raised my hand and asked a question. To the best of my recollection, it was something like this. "How do you deal with people who are self conscious enough to guess, or know, the purpose of the exercise and, rather than give a raw and unedited answer, would be wondering at what they were inadvertently revealing with their answer and thus self edit?" To me, this seemed like a no-brainer. I wasn't about to reveal to someone else things that I wasn't even sure of myself. I would be self-reflecting at my answers, trying to determine what they said about me. That process of self-examination itself, even if I was committed to being honest, would add a layer of obfuscation and calculation to what I presented the doctor.
Flash forward 13 years. I feel the same. I feel calculated. Every thing I show or reveal is weighed and calculated. I hate this. I don't know how to be open with people. There are a few that, I think, with whom I let my guard down enough that I am relatively certain they are getting the real me (for the most part). But at the same time, I feel so calculated in my presentation of myself. I hate this. I don't know how to stop it. Yet here I sit, desperately hoping for someone I can, one day, open myself up to completely and not be afraid. I don't know what that is like, to have no fear of that.
Maybe I'm not alone. Maybe what I want is a fantasy and doesn't exist for anyone. But I wish it wasn't so.
It didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't. I raised my hand and asked a question. To the best of my recollection, it was something like this. "How do you deal with people who are self conscious enough to guess, or know, the purpose of the exercise and, rather than give a raw and unedited answer, would be wondering at what they were inadvertently revealing with their answer and thus self edit?" To me, this seemed like a no-brainer. I wasn't about to reveal to someone else things that I wasn't even sure of myself. I would be self-reflecting at my answers, trying to determine what they said about me. That process of self-examination itself, even if I was committed to being honest, would add a layer of obfuscation and calculation to what I presented the doctor.
Flash forward 13 years. I feel the same. I feel calculated. Every thing I show or reveal is weighed and calculated. I hate this. I don't know how to be open with people. There are a few that, I think, with whom I let my guard down enough that I am relatively certain they are getting the real me (for the most part). But at the same time, I feel so calculated in my presentation of myself. I hate this. I don't know how to stop it. Yet here I sit, desperately hoping for someone I can, one day, open myself up to completely and not be afraid. I don't know what that is like, to have no fear of that.
Maybe I'm not alone. Maybe what I want is a fantasy and doesn't exist for anyone. But I wish it wasn't so.
I have always wondered the same thing about those tests. Is it really believable that anyone will speak with total candor, never second-guessing themselves in the moments between mind and mouth? To me that seems utterly impossible but maybe that is my introvert showing. I do have a few friends who hear me in my unedited moments but they are a small group and even with them there are places I just don't go. On the plus side, being introverts saves us a lot of awkward moments, wishing we hadn't just said those outrageous things we were thinking :)
ReplyDeleteI have a sneaking suspicion that those tests aren't nearly as helpful today as mental health teachers make them out to be. At least, I think they are relics of a bygone era when psychology was in it's infancy- not that it has matured all that much even today, but at least the way it seems to be practiced now has more in common with actual science than what it was back then.
DeleteI wonder if any of us are truly completely open with people. Self-editing seems to be a natural thing...but I don't know if that's right or not. Obviously, our friends and family individually reside at different places in the spectrum of how much we choose to reveal to them. (Clearly, we are not going to be completely open with someone we just met, for example.) Some people are closer to our hearts than others. Maybe that's it. People can move into that zone of trust as we know them better and learn that they will not reject us when we reveal more of ourselves.
Of course, there are all the little personal things we are ashamed of that we'd be mortified if someone knew...our thoughts, reactions, ways we handled something when not at our best or in private. I look back embarrassed at how I handled certain things as a Dad when Connor was younger. I hope he doesn't remember them. :-) And yet those are the things Jehovah knows and he still loves us. That is something, when you think about it. He sees what our potential is.
It'll be interesting to experience what Jehovah had in store for us as perfect people. Perfect means complete for the purpose we were created. That doesn't mean we will know everything. With incomplete information comes the possibility of mistakes, for error. At the very least, growth and change. (According to an article in w86, the Angels were surprised when Jehovah uttered a prophecy in Eden. They had never seen him do that before. So they learned something new about him and it modified them and their relationship with him.) Somehow, the idea that Jehovah will help us to continue to improve and grow, throughout eternity, is comforting to me. We are worth the effort to him, as jacked up as we are now.