There is a star in the skyIt is good to challenge assumptions. It is wise to challenge assumptions. But are you able to effectively, actually, challenge your own assumptions? I am going to be frank about my seven favorite assumptions and be as critical about them as I am able. To that end I plan to pick one each day of this week and set it aside as if it were 100% false or did not exist as part of my worldview. I think it should be enlightening.
Guiding my way with its light
And in the glow of the moon
Know my deliverance will come soon
There is a sound in the calm
Someone is coming to harm
I press my hands to my ears
It's easier here just to forget fear
And when I squinted
The world seemed rose-tinted
And angels appeared to descend
To my surprise
With half-closed eyes
Things looked even better
Than when they were opened
--Depeche Mode
My favorite assumptions, in no particular order:
- Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- Sympathizing and empathizing with people who have taken their own lives is ok for me emotionally.
- I deserve the time and attention a doctor devotes to me during an appointment.
- I should not feel guilty about having my emotions and urges.
- I cannot help but feel re-victimized when defense teams and others use awful tactics in high-profile sexual assault cases -- put another way people who have been sexually assaulted should be able to easily sue and win cases of emotional distress when anyone comments about the victims without sticking to the facts, right to an adequate defense and freedom of expression be damned.
- The lion's share of the blame for mass shootings and other atrocities go to the less-scrupulous members of the mass media who sensationalized and distorted mental health issues during the previous ones.
- You cannot universalize your own experience.
Setting aside each one of these will surely be hard but I think I can do it.
Have you challenged your assumption lately?
Day 1: I set aside "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Had a busy yet mundane day of appointments and such so I was not presented with extraordinary claims. Still I earnestly prayed to some deities by name and to the nameless and I opened myself up to paranormal/supernatural/unexplained phenomena but felt nothing. I remain open to replies in case there is longer than a 24 hour waiting period for the experience(s). I will try again when next I speak to my most spiritual friend (shout out to Frezzy-ville, what what!).
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, let's hear it for Reality!
Day 2: I set aside "Sympathizing and empathizing with people who have taken their own lives is ok for me emotionally." This was tough since I have spent most of my life trying to see from others' perspectives. Since I do not know how to determine that something is not ok for me emotionally, I instead tried to view a class of people as selfish and deserving of judgement/criticism and was fairly successful in doing that.
ReplyDeleteBut barring some radically new way to view them, I will likely hold onto this assumption for a while.
Day 3: I set aside "I deserve the time and attention a doctor devotes to me during an appointment." I did not see a doctor today so I will attempt this the next appointment I have with a doctor (also with other healthcare professionals but I can often feel ok dealing with them -- doctors are part of a class of "authority figures" that some part of my brain has decided need to trigger my anxiety more often than not, making it that much more difficult to express myself properly when seeking help for depression).
ReplyDeleteDay 4: I set aside "I should not feel guilty about having my emotions and urges." I had to deal with an indoor water leak (so 2 plumbing companies that my home warranty company selected) and a mental health professional who misses deadlines with alarming regularity. Luckily I had two family members with me all day to help me. So was I able to feel guilty about my emotions and urges (the goal for the day)? Only a little -- I remained stoic a few times by telling myself feelings of vulnerability and frustration were for the weak minded. To people who have had a lot of therapy this probably seems like an odd exercise since many (most?) therapeutic approaches aim to lessen the guilt one feels, particularly about feelings, and here I am trying to do the opposite. I said "sorry..." to my family members a few times about feeling certain ways but that was more out of habit than a conscious exercise as I challenged the above assumption for a day.
ReplyDeleteDay 5: I set aside "I cannot help but feel re-victimized when defense teams and others use awful tactics in high-profile sexual assault cases -- put another way people who have been sexually assaulted should be able to easily sue and win cases of emotional distress when anyone comments about the victims without sticking to the facts, right to an adequate defense and freedom of expression be damned." Throughout the years I have tried to feel less like a victim, and at least more like a survivor, but have only ever been able to do it for short periods of time -- minutes at the longest. Because of this I hesitated to even call this an assumption and include it in this post since it is closer to an identity or neurosis or disorder. Also I cannot remember a pre-victimhood state in my life. But on the odd chance that I had been overstating how much I "am" a victim and how being a victim did not stop once direct traumas had ended I thought maybe I could set it aside for a day but, again, it did not last more than a few minutes.
ReplyDeleteRegarding being able to sue and win cases of emotional distress I was trying to succinctly state that the US justice system, and the connected systems of law enforcement and property rights and medicine to name a few, are structured to give more rights and physical, mental, and emotional protections to perpetrators. If America (Americans?) wants to get serious about mental health, it must truly hear not just from victims but from mental health professionals and researchers (qualified experts in the field) that words are in a very real sense instruments of torture that keep victims scared, wounded, unable to heal (never mind able to thrive in society again), and suicidal. Not all victims, of course, but a significant number. Different victims (even of identical assaults) can and do have different triggers for what will bring the trauma to the surface again which will result in different expressions of fear, wounded-ness, etc, due to complex nature/nurture reasons. My basic argument is to move one step toward remedying the injustice faced by victims and can maybe use current emotional distress laws so when a reckless statement by a defense attorney or, say, a shock jock on the radio psychologically triggers, say, a thousand people, those thousand people ought to be able to sue and be swiftly compensated monetarily for being triggered unnecessarily. Rights come with responsibilities -- it is high time your freedom to say harmful words that victims of all stripes may reasonably hear is balanced by your responsibility to pay the high cost of your words on the psyches of victims since you are, in a very real and practical way, re-victimizing victims which reduces their future earnings' potentials for years and decades to come.
Day 6: I set aside "The lion's share of the blame for mass shootings and other atrocities go to the less-scrupulous members of the mass media who sensationalized and distorted mental health issues during the previous ones." I was successful in convincing myself for this day that all of the blame goes to the direct perpetrators of the shootings and atrocities.
ReplyDeleteAfter the day I went back to my assumption because I feel media members cannot hide behind freedom of the press/expression if they cherry-pick experts that just happen to agree with how they want to repeat the details of these incidents to fill the 24-hour news cycle. Responsible journalists will listen to a range of experts for all aspects of these incidents and will modify how they broadcast to help reduce the likelihood of inspiring future incidents. Journalists have a role in helping all of society tackle thorny issues such as those raised by atrocities -- acting like objective automatons is reckless.
[I likely will not be able to comment on setting aside my 7th assumption for quite some time but I welcome others to discuss it, or any of my other assumptions, in the meantime.]
Day 7: I set aside "You cannot universalize your own experience." This assumption is strictly true in the sense that we cannot know that what we sense then process in our mind is the same as what another person senses then processes in her mind. But I suppose some experiences could be universalizable for almost everyone.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the feeling of physical acceleration. Perhaps the feeling in one's ears upon changing elevation. Perhaps the crippling feeling of intense pain. Perhaps some experiences governed by the autonomic nervous system.
But the reason I would argue that universalizing experiences is folly is that each feeling and emotion can lead to other feelings and emotions. The particular sequences and durations of each produce different patterns that not only change between two persons but even within the same person sometimes. This is not to say that two people wrestling with depression should not bother to compare their experiences -- I only argue that people recognize that the odds of their experiences being the same decrease with longer timeframes. So the next time you catch yourself, say, painting several or all depressed people with the same brush, try to remeber the incredibly low odds of even two of them having the same experience for longer than a minute.