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Cornered – physical boundaries and confrontational conversation styles.

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One of the worst things you can do is make someone feel threatened when you talk with them. It is important to be mindful of the physical space between you and another person. A safe rule is to put out your arm, fingers extended, at a 90 degree angle away from your body. Don’t stand any closer than that to a person you don’t know unless they have given you permission. If you want to make them feel even more comfortable, stand even further away.

Just because you work with someone doesn’t mean you have permission. The boundaries are even more important if you are a manager, or of the opposite gender. Physical space is the same as people’s homes. In the same way that you wouldn’t invite yourself over to someone’s home you don’t know, you shouldn’t stand right next to someone you don’t know.

Cornering is another thing to think about. You may not be close to them, but they may not be able to leave. Your conversation will go much more smoothly if you pay attention to their physical comfort. If you are mindful of their physical comfort, they will mentally feel more comfortable as well. A simple conversation can become a confrontation if someone feels physically threatened.

Consider whether they are literally up against the wall. Are they able to physically back away from where you are when you’re having a conversation? Even if they’re not up against the wall are you blocking their method of escape? They may not want to escape but if you physically block them then they will feel like they need too. If you are essentially trapping them in a room it is very threatening.

If you need to talk to a person who is sitting in a chair at a desk, be mindful of cornering them there. They are blocked on their front and back, and depending on the chair they are blocked on their sides as well. If you are within an arm’s length of them at the same time, you’ve just doubled their discomfort. If they have to look up into a light to talk to you, and at an angle, you’ve achieved the trifecta of terrible communication styles.

Having a conversation while standing up is also a bad idea. It will make the conversation more confrontational. Sit down if at all possible, and make sure you are both at eye level. Having a table between you can make the other person feel more comfortable. Be mindful though that it might establish a sense of hierarchy. If you are a manager and the conversation is at your desk, it will not be an equal conversation.

Also it is important for you to consider your body posture. Is it open or closed? Do you have your arms crossed in front of you? Do you have your legs crossed? Are you looking away from them? All of these are “closed” body postures and indicate to the listener that you aren’t listening to them. Do the opposite to let them know you are fully present.

If you want them to listen to you, then you have to make it look like you are listening to them by altering your body posture. But you have to get some sort of middle ground. It is important not to fling your arms around a lot. It is important not to open your legs up wide and scoot your pelvis towards them. Both of those are very aggressive moves. They are too open. Look for a balance and remain neutral, not too forward, not too far back.

Stuck again. Maybe I never left.

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I’m tired of being thankful. I’m tired of feeling like I’m stuck in the belly of the whale. I’m tired, and angry, and frustrated, and I want to quit. I want to quit it all. I want to retreat to a safe warm hole and curl up and wait until the winter of my own personal discontent passes or at least thaws. I envy bears.

I’m tired of the fact that I’ve taken all these classes to learn how to be compassionate to other people and they don’t seem to have taken the same time or effort to learn how to be compassionate towards me. Pastoral care, two series of Dialogues in Diversity, The Circle Process, and then Remo Health Rhythms drum circle facilitator – all of these are about peacemaking. All of them are about learning how to help people communicate in different ways. Even my tutoring that I do feeds into this. Yet nobody seems to take the time to learn how to communicate with me.

I feel betrayed by my job, which then leads me to remembering that I was betrayed by my church and my social group I was in, and my friends from high school. There have been too many changes in the past few years. Too many new things. Too many new rules that don’t make sense. Too many people trained and gone. Too much to keep up with. And now there is a new manager that has a communication and leadership style that I don’t know how to deal with. I can’t make sense of it. I feel lost.

My last performance review said that I was the reason the department held together for the year that we didn’t have a manager. A year, without a manager, and we were better organized than branches that had a manager. I’ve been there for 14 years, and I’ve got a pretty good idea of what we need to have done day by day to keep the place going well. I care about my job. I care, in part, because I’m there all the time it seems. This is my home in a way. I’m awake there more often than I am at my real home. I spend more time with these people than I do with the person I chose.

And that is part of the problem. I didn’t choose these people, and they didn’t choose me. We are a misfit family. We didn’t decide to be together. We learned how to work together. We learned how to adapt. And then it all changed. People moved, got transferred, died. People left, and I’m the only person in my department who was there from the very beginning. Even the upper administration is new. Everything that I knew to be true is up in the air now. Even basic rules – rules that formed the backbone of how we do our jobs – even those are up for grabs now.

I feel lost. I feel alone. I feel powerless. I feel unappreciated. I’m angry and sad and tired.

Perhaps I’ve been there too long. Perhaps I’ve grown out of it. Perhaps it is time to quit. But part of being at a place for a long time is that I’ve built up a lot of vacation time and sick time. If I start over at another place I start over at the bottom. I’ve built up a pension here. But the idea of staying another 13 years until I can retire makes me feel ill.

And after all that happened yesterday, I came home and that was the day that my hoarder husband decided to start cleaning out his room. Piles of stuff were all over the house. The mess that is my house got even worse. It was like a tornado had come to town and destroyed my job and my home.

In a way, I’ve hit rock bottom. In a way, I’ve killed myself. I asked Jesus into it, as far as I knew how. I said I can’t do this, and I need you to take over. I did this last night, trying to use the information one person has about “walk-ins”. I’m pretty sure she is talking about multiple personality disorder or possession, but I’m thinking that Jesus is a better guide than some random person from the ether like she means. I’d forgotten about this by the morning, and then both of the readings I did were about death and rebirth. So far I’ve remembered to say the prayers for everything I’m supposed to. So far I’m getting back into the groove of all the things that I can control, that make things work well. The worst thing I can do is try to deal with an unstable environment without my routine in the morning. It is the framework for my day, and thus my life.

I don’t know what to do – whether to stay or to go. I don’t know what my duties are at work anymore. So I’m waiting, and I’m open, and I’m listening. Perhaps stay in the system, but doing a different job? Perhaps stay where I am, but do more programs? I need to feel useful, that I’m not wasting my life and my skills. I need to feel that I matter, and I’m helping. I don’t just want to collect a paycheck, but make a living, a life. I’m very mindful of how short life is, and I don’t want to spend most of it doing something mindless and insignificant.

I’m tired of living this double life, where I take classes and create art, music, and writing on my own. It is like I have a second job that I don’t get paid for. It is as if I have to supplement my diet on my own because I’m not getting enough nutrition. If I was “fed” properly at my job, then I could actually enjoy my time away from it, rather than scrambling to make meaning in my off time.

Sobriety sucks sometimes.

Enlightened divorce?

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I have read about several women who divorced their husbands when they “found enlightenment”. I don’t think it is very enlightened to divorce your husband. There is something about having gotten married that means you have accepted that person as part of yourself. Remember the idea that “two become one” and “until death do us part”?

Divorce makes sense if there is abuse, but not if there is “enlightenment”.

If you find as you grow older that the person you were married to is not compatible with you it doesn’t necessarily mean you should get a divorce. You should reassess your relationship, definitely. Perhaps get marital counseling or learn how to take care of yourself better. You can establish new boundaries, if you even had any in the first place.

It is important that people learn how to be themselves within a marriage. I’ve read a Rabbi who said that sometimes for the benefit of peace some people need to get divorced. Peace is more important than anything else. And if people cannot achieve peace it is okay to separate.

I still think this is missing something. The person you married is in your life for a reason. You made a commitment before your friends and family (and for some people, God) to stay with this person forever. “Forever” doesn’t mean only when things are good.

People need to acknowledge the shadow sides of themselves. We all have dark parts about ourselves. When we are in therapy we don’t ignore those parts but we look at them and we study them. We learn how to use them in new ways. When we ignore our shadow side we are ignoring part of our selves.

Likewise, when you get married to someone you have incorporated that person into yourself. If you find that they are not strengthening you than they are now your shadow side. It doesn’t mean you get rid of it. It means that you learn what it is. You learn to work with it and through it and because of it. No, it isn’t easy, and it isn’t fun. But that is part of being an adult.

Part of being an adult is being sober, and awake, and conscious about life. Part of that is about learning to handle difficult things. Life is only beautiful and easy if you are a child. Only handling life when it is smooth sailing means that you aren’t an adult yet. So divorcing your husband because you are “enlightened” means that you aren’t.

Re-verse

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I have to re-verse my book. I’m not making it go backwards. I have to take out all the Bible versions in the translation I have, and change them to another translation. This is the third time I’ve had to do this. Not every chapter in my book has Bible verses, but enough do that this is a real task.

I started off using the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation. I find it very easy to read and understand. The words don’t get in the way. I started using it because I’d gotten a free version of the Bible in that translation at the time I had committed to reading the Bible the whole way through. When I was writing my blog, it was easy to copy from this translation online because it was the same as what I was reading. The website “Bible Gateway” made doing this very simple.

Then I started thinking about publishing my blog as a book. I also started thinking about copyright and permissions. The Bible is old enough that it is in public domain – but not all translations are. The HCSB is new enough that I’d need permission to use its translation if I’m going to make money off of it. I’d probably also have to give them some royalties too.

I wanted to avoid all of that mess, so I did a little more research and found a website that said if the translation is older than 25 years, then you can use it with no problem. One option is the Revised Standard Version. It is fairly readable, even though there are a few examples of “thy” and “saveth” going on. I had to entirely re-write one post to make it fit this translation.

That was the least of my troubles, though. My book as it was assembled was 76K words. That is 76K words I had to wade through, find all the Bible verses and switch them out from HCSB to RSV. That took a long time. That was really boring. I wanted to quit the whole idea of publishing and move on to something else. There were more posts to write. I couldn’t be bogged down in re-versing this whole book. I doubt I’m even going to make money off this thing. Why am I spending so much time on it?

I had to really fight with myself over this. I decided that even doing a little a day was better than doing nothing. It wasn’t going to do itself. Every day I’d work on re-versing one post. Some days I could fix two or three. Meanwhile, I was still writing a new post every day. This is in addition to running a household and working a full-time job.

Finally I was done. I started looking around for help in formatting. I have a friend who has self-published books and I thought I could hire her. She told me that she’s gone out of the book business, so she gave me the name and contact information of someone she worked with. I dislike contacting new people, but I finally worked up the courage. Turns out she too was unavailable, so she gave me the number and contact information for yet another person. By this point I wanted to do it all on my own or give up, again. But I pushed on.

His price was too high. I couldn’t get how I should be expected to give a stranger $500 to make my book look pretty on the inside. I had done all the work putting it together – he was just going to polish it. He didn’t even have to edit it. He wasn’t going to touch the words – just tweak the margins and put page numbers and headers in. I shopped around for other people who provide this service and found similar amounts. I even edited out 10K words of it to reduce the cost. I figured I could publish those chapters later in a second book, depending on how well this one does.

Remember that I still don’t think I’m going to make money on this. I still don’t have any spare time to do all of this. I’m shoehorning all of this into everything else I have to do to pay the bills.

Then I hit another snag. I found out that the RSV translation is fine to quote from only under specific circumstances. I was looking up the exact wording on how to cite my use of it, and the citation said “Used by permission”. It turns out that permission is automatically granted up to 500 verses. After that, you have to contact the copyright holder and get written permission. That is The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. I looked up their contact information and emailed them. I still have not heard a response, and it has been a week.

I am not going to take the time to count how many verses I have used, but I’m certain it is over 500. Time is slipping by. I’d like to publish this by Christmas.

Sure, in a way, it is already published. It still exists on my Betsy Beadhead blog. I created a second blog called “The Empty Cross Community” in order to put it together in a logical order. The words are out there. People are reading it and commenting on it. Two posts have been published in the Huffington Post. But it isn’t the same. It isn’t a real, physical book. I want that. Maybe some of that comes from having grown up in libraries. Maybe some of that comes from having an English degree. Books are special. Sure, the words are special – but there is something about having an actual printed book with real pages to turn that is satisfying and substantial.

Even the title was up in the air. I’d thought about using “The Empty Cross Community” for it, but found that there is a sculpture of a cross called “The Empty Cross”. There is a “trademark” symbol after that name. I wrote the group that is connected to the sculpture to ask for permission to use the name and didn’t hear back. This was yet another thing that blocked my forward progress. I’ve since contacted them again and found that they have the trademark on their design for the cross, but not the name. They can’t trademark the name (they tried) because it is not unique. I’m free to use it for my book title if I want, but by now I’ve committed to using another name. It is “Leaving Church, Finding Jesus”.

Meanwhile, I’ve started re-versing this book once again. I’ve saved it as a separate file, just in case the copyright holder gets back to me. Once again I’m grateful for the Bible Gateway website for making this a not-so-painful process of copying and pasting. There are a lot more examples of “thy” and “-th” at the end of verbs in the American Standard Version. There is nothing I can do about it. I’m using this version because it was put out in 1901 and is most certainly in the public domain. Anybody can use it for anything, with no restrictions on the amount of verses used.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in the story of Balaam with his donkey. Is there something in the way that is preventing me from moving forward that I can’t see? In that case an angel stood in his way and only the donkey could see it. He beat the donkey but it refused to budge, keeping him alive. Or is this entire ordeal like the struggle of Jacob wrestling with the angel all night long? He got blessed in the morning because he didn’t give up.

Maybe it is a little of both.

Am I your friend or your customer?

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I’m encountering a lot of people who have started their own businesses. I’m finding that the line between friend and customer is a bit blurred. Someone I thought was going to be a new friend turns out to be friendly just to sell me something.

I’ll meet them in a social setting. It isn’t as if I’ve walked into their business and tried to strike up a friendship there. I didn’t know at the time that they were trolling for new customers. I think we call it “networking”. I call it confusing.

There are many ways that the friend/customer line gets blurred. One is that I’ll ask for advice on how to do what they do and there is a hesitation. They aren’t consultants, but they are afraid that I’ll steal their tricks or their business. They want to charge me to talk with them.

Another is when I give a new friend my email address and then she signs me up for a mailing list of all her activities. I get an email every time she plans some new event. If they were free events, that would be one thing, but they aren’t. These are all things I’m supposed to pay her for, and often the fees are very high.

If she had to pay for the experience to happen or provide materials, I understand. Sometimes the rental place has to be paid for or there are supplies involved. But if it is an experience at her home where she didn’t have to put out any money, then I don’t see why there should be a fee at all. It is as I’m expected to pay a fee just for the privilege of getting to be with her.

Life Support

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Part of a living will states that you don’t want to be on life support. This can mean anything from artificial ventilation to artificial feeding. If you are unable to live on your own, you don’t want artificial methods to keep you alive. This is presuming that you are not likely to recover.

How far can we stretch this idea?

If a person isn’t able to exist independently, is she on life support? Say she can’t go to the grocery store because she has become so feeble that she cannot drive. Or he is so addled and confused that someone else has to pay the water and electric bill. They can’t exist on their own for very long without another person taking care of them. She’ll starve, and he will freeze in winter or die of heat stroke in summer.

Are they on life support?

What about the person who was born profoundly mentally or physically disabled? Every day, all day, for the rest of his life someone has to take care of his every need. He is not able to have anything resembling a normal human life without another person taking care of him.

Is this life support?

What about the wife who can’t figure out how to do anything in the house when her husband leaves on a business trip? The water heater breaks and she calls one of her children (who lives in another state) to come clean up and get a new water heater.

Is this life support?

Because of our modern society, we are all dependent on each other. Very few people grow their own food. The water and electricity we use is brought to us through the ingenuity and ability of others. Few of us have built the homes we live in. Our education is provided by others.

Is this life support?

A few people are homesteading. Some people have gone as far “off the grid” as possible. They take care of all their own needs. I read a story about a couple who had built their house, dug a well, and grew their own food. They wrote books and taught classes on how to do this. Because they had simple needs, they didn’t have to make much money. When the husband got older, he became infirm to the point that he felt he was going to be dependent on others. He made the conscious choice to stop eating so he would die, rather than have to make someone else have to take care of him.

So that begs the question – is everyone in a nursing home on life support? They are all dependent on other people for their existence.

What is life support, after all? In a way, aren’t we all on life support?

Smack talking

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Don’t talk smack to a cop. They are like hornets. If they sense trouble, they’ll call more of them to come. And then they will all sting you.

I hate that trick question. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” I want to say “Why, don’t you know?” Or make up something silly like “Because I was playing mariachi music too loudly?”

That isn’t really a great plan.

Sure, I’m a white woman. I’m middle class. I don’t run the same risk of death by cop that a black men would. But worse can happen. There are worse things than death. And when stopped in a strange place with a strange person who has a gun – even if that person is legally entitled to that gun – it is best to not act suspiciously.

Sometimes I watch the show “Cops” just to learn what not to do.

Flowers and vegetables

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I buy my own flowers, and I cook my own vegetables. I have to. I need to.

I wanted my husband to buy me flowers and to cook more vegetables, but it didn’t happen. Rather than feel resentful, I decided to show love to myself. Every week when I go to the grocery store, I get fresh vegetables and some flowers. He benefits from these things, sure, but I’m the first recipient.

For years I told him that we needed to start eating more vegetables. Eating mostly meat isn’t healthy. We didn’t have to go to being vegetarian, but at least more like omnivores. And by vegetables I meant actual, fresh vegetables. Not ones from the freezer, and not ones that had been processed to a point that they were unrecognizable.

This was beyond him.

Preparing fresh vegetables takes 20 minutes, from chopping up to steaming, but every night we’d end up eating an hour after I came home at 8. That is way too late to eat. I still can’t figure out how he was wasting that much time.

What pushed it over the edge was when I hurt my back and my chiropractor said that I needed to eat a vegetarian diet for a week to reduce the inflammation. My spouse totally didn’t get it, and I became even angrier and angrier as my physical pain got worse and worse.

I felt helpless.

Food is a basic need, and eating healthy is important. I felt that he was not providing for me in the way that I needed. Deep down, I felt that he was not loving me in the way that I needed. This is part of why I decided to make learning how to cook my goal for this year.

While I’m glad to feel self sufficient, I’m a little sad that he isn’t able to take care of me in this basic way.

It isn’t like I needed him to make a six digit salary, and to buy me furs and diamonds. It isn’t like I needed him to work hard enough that I didn’t have to.

It sounds selfish, and sad, and empty, that in this basic way he can’t support me. It is food, and flowers.

But, in a good way, I’m glad that I decided to love myself in the way that I needed to be loved. Rather than feel empty and abandoned, I decided to take matters into my own hands. It is healing at the same time it is sad.

Somehow, while I’m building myself up, I’m separating from him. I’m getting stronger by not relying on him as much. It is scary in a way.

I don’t trust women who crow about their husbands all the time – about how awesome they are, how wonderful, how supportive. I don’t believe them. Everybody has a shadow side. No person is perfect. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for them to get really angry about how much of a slob he is, or how scatterbrained or thoughtless.

Who cares if you stay when the relationship is good? It is how you work out the hard stuff that matters.

Don’t go changin’

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One of the worst things a new person can do is start to change things.

Perhaps your way is better. Perhaps the way you did it at your old place was smarter. But suddenly changing things at your new place when it affects everybody else isn’t smart at all. This is especially true if you start changing things without asking anybody else for their opinion.

Say we are all rowing a boat together, and a new person jumps in and starts calling out a different cadence. Or brings a different kind of oar. Or drops the anchor in the middle of the race. It is going to mess everything up. It is going to make the whole thing stop.

It is OK to ask, or suggest, or recommend. It isn’t OK to just do it.

Even if you’ve been there a long time, don’t make sudden changes if it affects other people. If it affects your work area and nobody else works where you are, then have at it. If other people use that space, then don’t.

Sometimes it may seem like we “are doing it this way because we’ve always done it this way.” Sometimes we may be. But sometimes there is a rule that you don’t know about because you’ve not been there long enough to know that rule.

Sometimes people will push back not because of the idea, but because of how it is presented. You have to warm people up to a change. You have to include them. You have to think about their feelings.

It doesn’t matter if the idea is a good one if people aren’t willing to put their energy behind it. Surprising people with sudden change will never result in their support.

The result isn’t more important than the people. If you leave the people out of the equation, you will make a far bigger mess than the one you were trying to fix.

Plus one

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You know how you’ll have a friend who you’ve known for many years and then she will get a boyfriend that you don’t like? Or worse yet, it is a spouse that you don’t like. So then you don’t want to spend any time with that friend, because she feels like she has to bring her boyfriend or spouse along to every single thing that you two normally did just together. I think the same thing about people’s children as well.

These are all their “plus one” relationships. They are invited to the party, and they bring someone extra that you don’t know. You haven’t really agreed to them being there, but you have to go on trust. Except it isn’t a party, it is a relationship between friends.

I want to have a relationship with just that person, not the significant other and not their child. To me, it shouldn’t be a package deal. Sometimes I luck out and the s/o or the child is very pleasant. But more often than not the opposite is true. The s/o is self-centered or abusive, and the child is, well, a child. Children can’t help being annoying when they are young. They can’t help being loud and interrupting all the time. That is just part of the nature of young children.

Sometimes you might try to arrange the gatherings when you know that the child is with his other parent. I know a lady who will invite her friend out for seafood – knowing that her husband is allergic to shellfish. This way just the two of them can be together.

Sometimes adding a s/o or a child to the mix signals the end of a relationship. Sometimes it is because people get too busy to spend time with friends. But sometimes it is because they don’t realize that their friends didn’t sign up for the s/o or the child. They’ll try to drag them along, and then nobody is happy.

Having a relationship with someone is like a contract. We agree on how we will be together as friends. We agree that we’ll call or write or visit a certain amount of times with each other to keep the relationship going. We agree that we’ll share each other’s good times and bad. But when you add a significant other or a child, it adds a whole other person to the contract. Everything has to get renegotiated, and rarely do people even talk about this. They seem to think of it as “Love me, love my partner or child” and it isn’t always that way. Just because I like you doesn’t mean I like who you live with.

Sometimes partners are abusive. Sometimes children are unruly. Sometimes the problem isn’t just dealing with the abusive or unruly other person that is suddenly in the mix, it is dealing with your feelings about this new and unpleasant person in your friend’s life.

You love your friend, and you don’t want to see her hurt. You can tell that this guy is bad for her. You can tell she’s totally inept at parenting. Watching her with these people hurts, because you know she is in for a lot of pain.

So some of the problem is about how you feel with this “plus one” added to the party. Some of it is about how it changes or destroys the relationship you had with your friend. Some of it is about how you feel bad for her, living with such difficult people.