I'm not sure if there is anything sacred. At least, I'm not sure there should be. If we can dig into anything, and find humor in everything, haven't we found true happiness and the meaning of life? Not necessarily true happiness, but more playfulness. Not everything is so fucking serious. Life is suffering and if we can accept it, then being with that suffering while trying to make the best out of it seems to be the best approach to things. A purely Buddhist endeavor to understand the pure sadness of life in it's entirety, but being able to be steadfast and stick with yourself and be “free from suffering and the root of all that is suffering”. This is against the principles of social work where all we do is analyze and don't make better. While self-awareness is important in order to go through life as an effective and not an obnoxious person, dwelling in self-awareness is depressing, self-deprecating, but many social workers get caught in this rut. Actually, many people in general probably get caught in this rut! Why do you think that we have anxious people in this world?
I think we need a better way to handle this shit! Let's use the extreme Buddhist ideal here and accept ourselves, remain steadfast with who we are, FUCK everyone else and what they think. If we can be loving towards ourselves, why does it really matter what everyone else thinks or how they interpret our actions? The people who really love us and who we really love will understand our out of control behavior, our outrageousness, our passion, our emotions and us in general. Each of us is unique, some of us are really obnoxious (but that's just because they can't look in the mirror). So let's embrace ourselves and make ourselves the best we can be.
There's no one who embodies this concept as boldly as Chelsea Handler, a woman who actually calls her "adopted midget", Chewy and refers to him as a Mexican nugget. Her most recent book was entitled, “Are you there Vodka? It's me Chelsea”. From a woman claiming that Grey Goose is her new God, and that waking up next to a redheaded man is like taking one for the team, I have found a new idol.
This woman is unbelievably brilliant. Maybe she drinks too much and sleeps around a lot, but she's totally self-deprecating and that's what makes her a morally superior being. (That and she's Jewish). Who cares if she got a DUII and spent the night in a women's jail. She is one person who could handle it like a pro and can make something funny out of it. And, she also says that she learned her lesson- so she's not stupid enough to drink and drive. She just hires Paris Hilton's driver.
People who can sit on national television and rip themselves to shreds, but love themselves enough to have self-confidence about it, are brilliant. All of us are human, do stupid shit. If there wasn't this little invisible piece of shit moral judgment, or social work fairy sitting on our shoulder, maybe we could all embrace our sense of humor about all the ridiculous things that we try to hide from everyone all the time. Social workers do have the god damn social work fairy sitting on their shoulder at all times and they can't escape it. That's what's wrong with most of them. They can't escape or determine their own identities or find themselves because they don't have the education enough to find out that there is such a thing as a difference between personal identity and professional identity. If social workers could be okay with not being God to their clients, they could admit that they have problems. At least not try to hide their evident problems from clients and not blatantly lie about them. For example, it's okay to not reveal your status as far as recovery to your clients about being in recovery or not when they ask, but if they find you in a grocery store loading up on beer, you're stuck. The best you could do is tell them, “oh, this isn't mine”. We can't all be perfect. The harder we try to hide that from everyone, the worse off everyone is.
On the other hand, if we could bust out on national television with our vulnerabilities, we would be much stronger people in the long run. Unfortunately, we all don't get to host E TV, or are as smart and quick witted as Chelsea Handler, but we do have the ability to be more honest with ourselves and people around us. This does not mean to tell clients in treatment that you are not in recovery just because they asked. This simply means that life is life and clients will have their opinions of you crushed if they find you at a dance club grinding with four black guys to Baby Got Back. But, you know what? That's your choice and it's your personal life. If they so happened to catch you there, it's something to discuss about their feelings about it in therapy, but it's not like you asked your client to join you or were there with your client. You just happened to see them. Just like a business man is occasionally caught in an embarrassing drunken encounter. If we didn't think so much about how we were letting everyone down around us, we would feel more positive about our own choices and lives instead of trying to hide our identities.
One of the biggest things that I did for myself in recovering from the ordeal with my last job was to recognize all the things about myself that were painful in order to move on and move forward. I realized how much shame that I had regarding some of them. Some of the blogs I have written have been horribly personal- but while this is anonymous, and will remain so, it's different. The real release and recovery came when I started sharing things with my friends and family that I found ridiculously embarrassing about having anxiety. Like, I'll show up early because I'm worried about panicking if I walk into a room of people where the attention is all focused on me. When you tell people what you are actually worried about instead of telling little white lies, you are able to loosen everyone up around you. It's amazing the little lies that we tell ourselves and everyone around us in order to maintain our “sickness”. With anxiety, you lie to yourself about the fact that you are anxious and continually try to deny it. If you are honest about it and put it out there, it's not as bad. If you can play it off and make it funny, you're in even better shape!
Humor is actually a coping mechanism for everything. When you smile, you use muscles in your face that remind you of being happy and it can actually trigger your brain to feel happier. When you smile, it's contagious and other people smile back. If you can laugh something off, it can help you keep your pride, can reduce stress and make you feel happy. These are all powerful things.
So, the question is, while Chelsea is TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL and a problem, is she really a problem, or is she brilliant? If we could all be this ridiculous and self-deprecating, would we really care so much what other people were doing? If we could all recognize how many problems that we all have (because we all have problems, and anyone claiming that they don't should die), would we really be judging people on all their problems?
Imagine if you were hanging out with the friend who weighed 300 pounds who would say, “damn you are so lucky you can eat fries, I like to keep my weight down by eating three orders instead of four”. Or, “Fat man in a little coat”. Wouldn't you like them better? Instead of them telling you what was wrong with your eating habits? I don't know, maybe you would prefer the latter because you like doing that. I don't know. I just know that we wouldn't be so concerned with what everyone else was doing if we were all a bit more self-aware and could express and communicate where we were coming from. If we are able to use humor to do so, more power to us because it makes us more likable. But honestly, people like you more if you have the ability to make fun of your shortcomings. At least I think so. If you are constantly trying to put on a show and prove that you are worth something, you are not doing yourself or anyone else a favor.
When Bowen Systems talks about making a change, he's not bullshitting when he says that it starts with you and your attitude about yourself. If you can show others that you know where you are coming from, they are more likely to respond positively to and move with you as a leader, even though they might be resistant.
It seems that if there was more laughing in the world and not so many of you tight ass supposedly non-judgmental social workers getting offended by opinions that are not open-minded, or just people in general taking things a little less seriously- sort of like an episode of General Hospital, rather than an episode of CSI- our world would be a happier and more relaxed place. If there were less concern with “the hidden meaning” behind a statement, or the assumptions made, the next step taken... we wouldn't rely so much on our tight and structured frameworks and would realize that really the universe is actually really big and something that we have no control over. It's going to take us where it's going to take us regardless of how we struggle.
But being more self aware, and working on ourselves could prove to solve a lot of world and personal conflict and struggle with ourselves and others.
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