Not set in stone by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
When I was an academic at the Perth university I studied and worked at all those years ago, I
came across a lot of people convinced they were imposters and that they would
soon be exposed and kicked out. I didn’t really experience this myself, and
felt this time of my life as being wonderful fun. This may be because I’d spent
ten years or so prior to this working as a researcher and editor of the
writings of academics and ordinary people alike and knew that I didn’t need to
set myself up as an expert, for I had certain skills and certain failings as
well, but I was always willing to learn and expand my expertise. This is the
key, I think. If I had thought of my knowledge and position as static and
immutable, I’d be terrified if it was questioned, for then my view of myself
would come tumbling down.
I am not fearful of what life throws at me. I don’t identify myself with
status or label, or whatever tag might be attached to me. This is not to say I
am free from inner stories that
come to bite me. This is the human condition, I think. What has become
different, as far as I’m concerned, is that I go for the thing that might
otherwise inhibit me from acting, something that allows me to roll rather than
get stuck. I wasn’t always like this. I was in fact a very fearful child.
This not getting stuck in ideas about myself is useful in many aspects
of life. In an article I read recently, the non-identification of oneself in a negative status allows for
fast healing, particularly in terms of relationship breakdowns. Those people
who self talk with “I’m no good at relationships”, or “I always choose the
wrong guy/woman” take much longer to recover. By not identifying oneself as the inevitable cause of the breakdown
of a relationship we’re free to say, simply, “this relationship was not right
for me,“ and move on. This is
sometimes easier said than done, and sometimes counselling is useful in freeing
ourselves from the negative self talk.
Nothing really is set in stone as far as life is concerned. Memories of
past times are wrapped in the paper of many layers of personal history and
these can inhibit us moving forward. Sometimes what we tell ourselves about who
we think we are gets in the way of doing what we really want. I nearly had this
experience recently.
I went to Perth during my recent summer holidays and was taken on a
couple of trips to my favourite place, Rottnest Island, a place dense with history, my own included in
with prisoners of war and, before that, aboriginal incarceration. There are
parts of the island that I have known intensely at significant points in my
life from infancy onwards; parts that evoke a complex mix of delight, poignant
anxiety, and pangs of longing. The
beach rosemary is so intensely beautiful that each time I go, I break a little
piece and conceal it in my clothing to take home: rosemary for remembrance of
sunny days at the beach.
On
one of the trips, I travelled on a friend’s boat. We snorkelled and frolicked
off Green Island, a small rocky stack off the south side of the island, and a
couple of the men donned their diving gear and went crayfishing. I remarked
that I would love to dive, if I could. So after their return I was kitted out
with weights, buoyancy control device, cylinder, fins and mask. It felt so
incredibly heavy, heavier than I’d remembered it seven years ago when I used to
dive quite often. I thought, I can’t do this and my mind was thus ablaze with conflict: to dive or not. Thousands of
reasons why not to dive, the thousands of images of myself as “the fearless
one” came and went along with “I’m just a little middle aged weak lady,” blah
blah blah, images of dying, of living, of disappearing into the deep deep blue,
arose and fell, and so on and so
on.. I contemplated flipping myself over the side of the boat, but had images
of knocking myself out doing it, so in a near trance I edged my way to the
jumping platform, sat down and let go into the water. There was a sort of
inevitability in all this and I merely dropped to the sea floor breathing as
naturally as a fish.
Diving always throws up my inner talk, and throws out beliefs I have
about myself , but in the end, I just
have to get on and do it. No escape. Once you’re in the water, that’s it. The
weights drag you under, and though you can inflate your vest it is so
uncomfortable the underwater beckons, and that is so lovely.
There is no escape in anything one chooses to do, really. Doing
psychotherapy (like doing teaching) as opposed to being a psychotherapist (or
being a teacher), there are no “outs”, unless of course one actually wants to
be completely useless. Doing psychotherapy means being there, thinking, making
metaphor, analogy, and being present with the other person where they are and
challenging that when appropriate. This is not the time to set in stone
anything. Not a time for having an immutable belief about oneself, nor thoughts
that one is brilliant or bad, or insipid.
All is changing all the time, just like being in water. Nothing is set in stone. Living is being, and not being a thing.
