ASSuming

Assuming, again. Assuming that we know the person in front of whom we face. Thinking just because they did (fill in the blank) one year ago means they will do it forever. If they were once well-meaning they care to change and grow to be a better person than yesterday to one day strive to become the best person they can. We think we know each other’s experiences but we don’t bother to really know. In my experience of counseling couples, I have found one assumes he or she knows what his or her spouse is thinking or feeling. I use my sessions for them to check it out. “Ask her, “   I say.  She sheepishly looks at him, expecting an answer without having asked him. He heard her ask me, the therapist, but now she’s embarrassed to ask. I did the asking already, so now she gets the answer she avoided confronting.

Assuming we know what other people’s grief feels like. Something I have learned in my healing processes is that it is a rare few that care about what you’re actually going through. Others will avoid you. Well, it depends on how you go about it. I remember breaking my hip and my wrist in the span of 6 years, and I can tell you that only 3 people stood by me on the different occasions. In the first, was a good friend, in the second, were my parents. I realized something: people don’t really know how to respond to need. I experienced this myself, in real time, while I lived in Beirut, Lebanon; I saw the deep needs and I shrunk back, feeling overwhelmed, better off and helpless all at the same time.

Are you complaining about your life situation? Chances are, others don’t know how to help you. When you charge them with an impossible job, they didn’t sign up for, but sense it in your tone towards them as you tell your “problems”. When they give you advice, but you shoot it down because “you tried it” or “it won’t work”. I want to ask you: What are you looking for here? “I can’t be your everything” he tells her, overwhelmed.

I remember the moment, at 18 years old, when I went to my mom in tears, telling her, “I thought you were supposed to be everything to me.” I caught myself as I said it and it left my lips. “Well, I’m not,” she said plainly. I realized in that moment I needed to let go of putting pressure on my mother to meet my needs. I was entering young adulthood, and she could not support me as she used to. Perhaps this is why our culture goes away for college. It was time for me to find myself. Here it goes…