IDIOT COMPASSION AND CHICKEN POX

IDIOT COMPASSION AND CHICKEN POX

I LOVE IT! So, even Buddhists call people idiots! This is the greatest news I've heard all day! Since my morose listing this morning, I have made an effort to turn my day around and stay out of my head Things are better, as long as I stay present and don't ask myself what if based upon the past (thinking leads me into anxiety, because my expectations are anxiety ridden). One of the things I did today was to spend some time meditating and reading a chapter of The Things that Scare Us.

I have been filling my head with the need to project maitri (loving kindness) on everything, because energy is a part of the universe. First, I can't do this yet (as I bet even Pema has a hard time with it). It's really hard to project positive love on everyone you hate and I'm going to say that 50% of the Buddhists who say they can do this can't really do it 100%. I am simply trying to project positive love on myself. That's hard enough. Once I've got that down, I'll let you know how it goes when I start projecting it on others.

However, Pema also says that there is such a thing as going too stupid with this. In other words, the idiot compassionate. The people who wish love on everyone to the detriment of themselves and decide that everyone but them is important. Those who think life is about placating others, avoiding conflict and being a martyr. While I may recognize that these people are suffering, I definitely do not have the ability to cast loving kindness upon them. That takes a serious practiced Bodhhissatva warrior.

I do, however, have the ability to shut these people out and choose not to be a part of their idiot compassion, or try to take care of them. And that's okay thanks to Pema. While I can wish them well, I don't have to include them in my life or let them affect my energy flow.

This idiot compassion is too much for me. This represents most of the social work community. I have decided that there is something seriously wrong with social workers. We all know of people like this, and the majority happen to be in the helping professions. These people drive me up a fucking wall because they won't take care of themselves. My tendency is to try to yell at them to take care of themselves. How's that for irony? I get pissed off when others don't take care of themselves, and there for a while, I fell into the trap of taking care of everyone but myself (look where it left me?). This is not a useful skill. It does not make us healthy and it does not make us good helping professionals. It's okay to be a natural helper, but a martyr is a whole different story.

For example, a few weeks ago, I was at an event where there was a long line around a huge square table with post sporting activities food laid out. This was not a buffet style meal, it was junk food-potato chips, cookies etc. There were huge gaps at the table where no one was, but for some reason everyone was waiting in line. Well, I simply wanted one cookie, which I could see from where I was and went to grab it. My friend later left our group for a few minutes and was gone for a while. Everyone thought she went to the bathroom, and she had been waiting in line. A few of us were like, “honey, just go grab a cookie”. She continued to make excuses for herself about how she wasn't hungry anyway and we were leaving soon to get breakfast anyway. I was like, “whatever, suit yourself” and walked up to the table to get another cookie for myself. Sure enough she wanted a little bit. I wouldn't give it to her though because I told her to get her own. What that fuck is this? Get your own god damn cookie! No one in line cared- the people who were waiting in line were getting plates and picking up a little bit of everything.

Martyrs go on a scale. There are some people who are tolerable, and others who seriously are asking to be put on a cross because of all of their good doing (as if it's really do-gooding and not enabling). I have learned early on in social work that we cannot change people who don't want to change. We cannot force people to do anything that they don't want to do. But watching other people take care of everyone but themselves while at the same time, making it seem like they've got everything under control are almost as fun as Cruella DeVille on her period.

A total martyr (further down the spectrum) would be described as someone who tells dramatic tales of self-sacrifice- everything from how her boyfriend, K-Fed, who has 3 kids (from different moms) decorates his house with beer cans and accessories such as dirty, unemployed roommates who do a lot of drugs. She will spend hours bitching about how she had to go over there and clean the place up and babysit (even though they supposedly broke up). She will tell dramatic stories about people putting her in the middle of everything and brag about how she was the first to know about so and so get married. She will wait for you to tell a story, and share sixty similar stories to one up you. In the meantime, you will never know anything about him or her personally. I wonder if they notice that they never have anything to say about themselves because they spend so much time involved in other people's problems, or if they actually recognize that they avoid talking about themselves because they don't like themselves.

I have decided that the reason this irritates me so much is that it has been my job to get people to want to help themselves. I also personally don't like people who sit and bitch about everything but their own problems and they piss me off. Moreover, I like being able to make an impact on people's life, or provide motivation for them. This is not to feel self- important, but simply something that I would like to impart to people. This does not mean that I am always working, but that I feel that relationships should be mutual. Not one sided or self-sacrificing. People who complaint that their boyfriends leave them at home with their kids while the boys go out drinking every night are a problem. They don't deserve anyone to listen to their whining because they're not going to do anything about it anyway. This is why I could never work with people who have domestic violence problems. I don't like them.

I realize that people who don't want to help themselves are not going to and nothing that I say will make a difference with them. This does not mean that everyone understands how to help themselves. For example, for people with DD, they can't necessarily pick up and help themselves if they don't know the skills. It's like this for a lot of people. But for other people, they just really don't want to help themselves. They just like to sit around and listen to themselves bitch about EVERYBODY that sucks. Everything from their deadbeat boyfriends to the fact that so and so went to a loud concert when she was pregnant. In the meantime, this person sits and shoves happy meals down like a professional hot dog eater. Of all people to be giving advice and passing judgment! Anything to avoid talking about themselves or their own issues.

Even better, these people always make you feel bad. It wouldn't be so bad if they kept their own self hatred from bubbling up and splattering diarrhea all over you, but they are rarely capable of such a feat. Instead, when you haven't seen them in a while because you haven't called and they call you and email you and you don't get back to them right away, they call you and leave a message like, “why didn't you get back to me?” Whenever you call them, however, they have no problem never returning your phone call. Moreover, if they do call back, they love to run out your voicemail about all the reasons that they can't get together next week. A simple, “busy week” would suffice. After all, I WAS only calling you because I knew I would get ripped a new asshole if I didn't. These are martyrs, evil self-sacrificing people who, somehow couple with my own personality to pick an open wound. Disgusting.

The problem that I have is that I don't necessarily hate these people, but I search and search to find out what I did wrong that is causing their behavior. I take it upon myself to think that I was the cause of all the issues that they had, when really it was the situation. Then, I hurt myself thinking of all the possibilities of what was up with them. So, I let them in and I am hurt.

The goal with these people is to set boundaries. You don't have to be friends with someone to wish them love or wish on them the ability to find self-insight and friendliness towards oneself. I know that usually people who are problems usually have problems. I also know that I am a judgmental person. But, Pema says that we are not martyrs or people who lack judgment, but simply people who can recognize it and not let it get locked up or stuck in a cycle of drama, which is the challenge. It is very difficult to continue to channel boddhichitta, or emptiness while thinking of enemies or people who have deeply hurt you. Or who just piss the hell out of you and make you feel like you just escaped from a fraternity rush party (covered in vomit and sprinkles).

Let me list a few characteristics of the idiot compassion that Pema speaks of:
1.self-sacrifice
2.gossiping about other people behind their backs without an equal balance of talking about yourself
3.no sense of self-deprecating humor about self (if you're going to spend half your time bitching about other people- like me, it makes you a lot more likable if you can recognize that you've got some fucking issues too! At least, I think so.
4.Constantly telling everyone else what to do while avoiding or being unreceptive to feedback.
5.Complaining about everyone else's problems without any kind of self inclusion or examination
6.blaming or externalizing
7.bitching and never changing or doing anything about it
8.getting overly wrapped up in everyone else's drama
9.being indirect or manipulative

It is important to recognize that there are some people out there, like the first example I gave about the girl and her food, that have the ability to look at themselves. People who are passive, but are willing to look at themselves and be self reflective are not martyrs or do not piss me off as bad as people who are not willing to look at themselves. Maybe this is because I spend so much time looking at myself, I expect that everyone do the same! HA It's all about me after all right? No, it's because they recognize what their traits are and their not closed off or trying to take all the information that you give them and turn it against you.

Anyway, I have been surrounded by too many people who cannot take care of themselves and I'm not going to take care of them either. Therefore, my job was a position where it was a standard not to take care of yourself. From my martyr coworker who would say, “I'll be in on Sunday to catch up on my work”. Um, fuck you? Why would you come in to catch up on work that you can't seem to get done during the week? You are not paid to come in on the weekend and there is no reason to do that aside from telling everyone about it first to be a martyr. Anyone who has to catch up on work on Sunday does not need to announce it to the whole team before they do it in a three person office. It's not like they couldn't just do it and if someone asked, tell them later. But there is NO REASON aside from trying to gain credit to talk about it.

Enough beating of a dead horse. This entry is essentially about my closing off this chapter in my life. I refuse to engage with people like this until I have figured out how to handle them and have surrounded myself with enough positive people to counterbalance these old negative influences. And I've been backed up by Pema! Just because I can't deal with a person doesn't mean that I can't unplug from them. Unplugging is okay. For all of us. It's okay to protect ourselves instead of letting this contageous self-sacrificing behavior suck you in. It's like a fucking case of chicken pox. If you let your kid go play with the neighbor kid who has it, he gets it and then it spreads like the plague (much to the joy of the parents, until one of their kids has a severe case and ends up on life support).

Side note: I always thought this as kind of evil of parents. They would try to be all sly and say, “oh honey, go over to Jared's house”. And you would ask why because they never let you go over there before, plus he's go all sorts of sores on his face. What's wrong with him? “Oh nothing, honey, those are just zits”. Too bad were too young to know what's really going on. Then, we go over to Jared's and Jared is in bed with Calamine lotion all over and we can't play with him anyway. So, we tell his parents and they just tell us to go sit next to Jared on the bed. “But I don't wanna! He's got zits! It's gross”. But you do anyway. Then about an hour later after you've been forced to use Jared's toothbrush and wear his underwear, you can go home, only to get zits yourself a week later. Only these zits are painful and itch so badly you can't even sit on the toilet seat, all the while your evil parents tap their fingers together and breath a sigh of relief. That's just wrong.

Tomorrow, I'll get back to the tools you can use to find support while in social work. I'll talk a bit about Therapists: The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back.