I’m thinking a ton lately about issues of race and gender/sex/identity and how it’s all intertwined and how it affects my work and how I should/can change my work as I know and understand more. And I understand so very little, when it comes right down to it.
The more you know, the more you know you don’t know shit, right?
As I’m thinking about these things especially intensely over the last few weeks, I try to very gently enter into conversations that are about these topics and ask questions. For a while, it just seemed I couldn’t ask anything right or in the right way. I kept getting, well, yelled at in a variety of ways. No one was super mean but I was definitely getting my hand slapped, and I was getting more and more frustrated.
How can I learn if I can’t ask?
Then I had a private discussion with someone who lives these questions and who cares for me and was willing to kinda hand hold and be patient though very direct (which I respond well to). Thank GOD for this person.
But you might be surprised to find out what I learned or maybe you won’t be surprised at all because you’re further ahead on this curve than me and you’ve already been muttering to yourself as you read this.
I learned that, really, I WAS the problem. Or my approach was anyway. Even though I approached with love and good intentions and care, I was still expecting too much.
I was still expecting the person who is suffering to do the work for me. I was still expecting them to do heavy emotional lifting for me.
Here’s what I was extra surprised by: this was happening because I do this FAR TOO MUCH FOR OTHER PEOPLE in my own work and world.
People who have brains and can do research come to me with basic questions about trauma. I use my precious time and brain energy giving them all of the information on a platter. When they could just as easily go get that information for themselves, do the basic thinking for themselves, and come back later when they’re ready to have a genuine discussion with me as two equal humans struggling.
I hand hold people like crazy on the regular, thinking I “should” or maybe people won’t “like me.”
See that people pleaser woman shit right there?
So then when *I* am the asker, of course, I enter into the scenario with the same messed up expectations for the person I perceive as the “expert.”
Whoa…
What a crap ton of codependent shit right there. Can you see it?
I’m off to order a bunch of books about racism, white fragility, and the intersection of racism and sexism (because hello, constitution, written FOR AND BY white men).
I’m gonna go do my homework and I’m asking that you do yours too, okay?
Because I’m also gonna be recovering from all that people pleasing.