Take a Stand

My blog is late this month because I didn’t know what to write about. I didn’t know what I had to say, and then I wondered how that happened. When did that happen? I figured it out. It happened when I returned to psychology school. When I attended a program about a decade ago to acquire my Bachelor’s in Applied Behavioral Science, I went through an esteem crushing experience. I came out of that program feeling like humpty dumpty at the bottom of the wall. I was taught how to shred myself, how to question everything about myself, my attitudes, my opinions, my intuition, my assumptions, my reactions and every feeling I had. When the program was over, no one told me how to put all the shredded pieces back together again. The effort of digging at my psyche was a good and valuable process, but I think they forgot something; all the tiny pieces cut up by doubt brought on through constant questioning lay there in disheveled shards with no glue in sight. Now I am again in psychology school, again being told to evaluate, question, and discern feelings. If I’m angry it must be because I have a complex. It couldn’t be because someone else is controlling and manipulating me into allowing them to do the wrong thing. Take this opportunity to look at your complex and discern why you feel this way, they say. This time, I know better. The complex and the problem are not mine. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they aren’t. It’s easy to forget that others may actually be the problem. It’s easy to forget that sometimes we are right and sometimes the right thing to do is stand on solid ground and say NO! I’ve decided, I like me the way I am and I will not shred myself again for any program or for the sake of following the herd. There seems to be a need within me, and others, when attending psych school, to put on this persona that says, “I’m cool. I have no issues worth looking at so let’s all just move along. I don’t want to be on the hot seat so I’m just going to agree with the authority figures and keep my head down.” It is this attitude that has caused the whole of America to be in its current state. We have sat down and shut up long enough to allow Corporations to become people, to allow our food supply to be contaminated and unhealthy, to allow our healthcare system to make us sicker rather than better, and the list goes on. I don’t want to be that person. Not again. Questioning is a fine and good thing, but at some point, you have to be enough to accomplish what you want to accomplish. My dark parts are just as valuable to my personhood as my light parts. I need both to be in this world and I will keep the ones that help me take a stand for what I think is right, thank you very much. Onward!