Toxic Me
In 40 odd years of therapy, I have had to cycle through more than one language evolution. The shift from "Manic Depressive" to "Bipolar" is the best documented, but far from the only. I often try to hunt down pop psychology books from the 60's and 70's to see if I am remembering right. They seem to evaporate like water on hot toxic asphalt. The digital stuff, at least. Still, continuing my therapy requires updating my vocabulary. MD terms must be translated to BP terms for the therapy to continue. The Manic Depression support groups are long gone.
Translating the Toxic People vocabulary has been a mean transition because its metaphors are so often in direct conflict with my environmental science experience. It plays on neighborhood politics far more than toxic waste realities. NIMBY personified. . .
Declaring other people toxic strikes me as the blame game and victim self-image I have worked hard to therapute. Ain't a-going there. Go ahead and diagnose me as "Narcissitic" for it, my righteous experts. Yea, yea, this is me, taking my rightful place in the Toxic People Landfill. I'm not comfortable in this conversation. Have a righteous good time, my non-toxic ones. As always, I am more comfortable among the rejects.
When I point a finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointed back at me. Think I'll ply my finger-pointing exercise to this body of confusion. The hoary finger of blame, I point at Doctor Julian Glass, the author of the original book published in 1995. I learned her name just this morning and have only seen one set of random internet photos. This cosmetic beauty is 65 years old and doesn't look a day overdue for her next youthenization procedure. Her photos reinforce my image of the NIMBY protester demanding the right to have the refuse of her fashionable lifestyle carted off to somebody else's neighborhood. Just give her her latest greatest and don't expect her to look at how fast she is filling the landfills with her rapid cycling fashion sense or the environmental damage/social injustices perfomed in providing her that latest greatest at an economical price.
Very few of her published works are not all titled with Toxic ____. A few of her titles might even have caught my browsing interest as I have passed time in the bookstores and libraries. Obviously not enough to have remembered her name before today. If I saw her at a book-signing, I wrote her off as just another aging, dye-headed bimbo.
In my finger-pointing exercise, I use the hoary finger of blame to focus the internal conflict. Once I have focused the issues, I lift the hoary finger of blame to look at the three fingers pointed back at me. The three fingers pointed back at me are where I find the resolution. I have no power over Doctor Glass or her millions of disciples. I do have power over how I process their wisdom.
At this moment, I donae believe I have focused the issue. Sorting. . .
Replies
I have not registered the toxic people crap at all until very recently when I read something here on DS about the need to identify the ones in someone's life so they won't keep dragging us under.
maybe dr glass is rebelling against the half empty syndrome she has been linked to?
I have been aware of the three finger pointing back to me solution you told me about years ago. I have used it many times in the effort to try to keep myself off the hypocrite list. I am fairly sure IF there is a list somewhere, then I still manage to make the list far to often. my shut mouth exercise does not keep me off the list of hypocrites in my mind.
focusing on something that has not happened yet is the hardest fruitless task I have done many times, GOD does like to play a part in the image that do emerge out of those thoughts.
heeling prayers is my stolen from you phrase that I really like, and return to you once again...
Eldest Son (37) and his drug buddies are the ones who put the Toxic yaddahs on my radar when they declared me "The Toxic Mother." In their logic, "cutting ties" does not extend to the financial entitlements. It never registered beyond the latest druggie slang, complete with the expectation that it would morph to its next whatever at the next pot party. It did. It would be no surprise if ES doesn't even remember the verbal abuse. I probably would have forgotten it, as well, had it not been such a cherished metaphor set here on DS.
Language triggers have been a biggie in my personal therapy. I can get lost in the dramatic diffs between Miss, Mz-z-z, Mrs and Missus. I flipped out on more than one level when my "Manic Depressive" dx morphed into "Bipolar" More than one of my therapists and peer supporters have accused me of using the grammar debates as a way of deflecting any and all solutions. I worried more about what to call ^it^ than what to do about ^it^. And I am, in strictly personal fact, a person who gets physical eye aches from light metaphors. . . Methinks there may be something to the criticism. I do, indeed, give entirely too much power to figures of speech.
Still sorting. . .
For sure, it is downright discouraging how often I get lost in metaphor, but it is a common problem among literal thinkers, such as scientists and engineers. Redefining emotions as light bulbs and toxicity as character judgements is a mystery I may have to leave to greater minds than mine.
I still don't get how war can be holy, either. Nobody gets to understand everything. No leg pulling here. Metaphors sincerely confuse me.
War is very holy. In war people make holes in other people. I've never really understood why.
Yeah, parenting is like that.
It's interesting that the greatest "parenting regrets" that I have, don't match up with my daughter's greatest "parenting failures". She remembers very clearly me putting her to bed one night and taking away all of her blankets. I have no idea why I did that, but have no doubts that I did. Well apparently my daughter remembers the details of her princess pillow very well because she used that to keep herself warm. (I remember spanking her rather hard one night...but nope, she's got no memory of that one.)
Fact is, that whatever you do, you'll make mistakes at one time or another. Generally that's why on times when it really counts (like building a bridge) there are supposed to be multiple people all checking...so I'll catch your mistakes and you'll catch mine.
Parenting works best if a "village" is raising the child. So when a parent hits a wall, then someone else steps in and plays with the kids for a few hours/days/weeks. Friends that had active grandparents/aunts/uncles had a much much much easier time raising their kids than I did.
So ya know, I have no doubts that you were toxic at times. So was (am) I. I've also done it 99.999% alone. Our specific issues were different, the struggle was the same.
Grammatically speaking, there are huge diffs between Holy, holey and wholly. Funner than two, to, and too. Which witch is which. Fun with phonetics. . . Or is that phun with funetics?
Pretty much throughout life, I am frequently amazed by the diffs in perspective. The never ending gaps between distinguishing problems from solutions.
I still haven't been able to stomach enough of the psycho toxicity reads for comprehension, but as I understand the Psycho Toxicity, it is an either/or judgement. Name calling. Off to somebody else's backyard. 'Taint my problem where the trash in my can goes off too any more than the suffering in the sweat shops that fill my can. Just get it out of my awareness. I have perfection to perform.