Posted by 64Bowtie on March 24, 2004, at 16:09:28
In reply to Re: Marinoff and 'philosophical counseling'-2nd, posted by DaisyM on March 23, 2004, at 10:29:13
(((Daisy))), thanks for the good words. May I tilt what you said ever so slightly?
We (I) have a problem getting past "me". I am my own worst enemy. However, I no longer am plagued with internal torment and internal conflict and internal visions of righteous torture. I now can see a conflict coming even before it gets here.
20 or so conflicts per day is about normal. Any disagreement as to what to do next or how to do it even when it seems to resolve itself, is still a conflict. So, since we do all this conflict management on a moment by moment basis, why are we so bad at the overall realm of conflict resolution?
Three arbitrary examples:
1. What we FEEL is part of someone elses feelings that we ascribe to, leaving us guessing how to use that feeling. We use it to make a decision, and it blows up!
2. We FEEL things should turn out a certain way so we move heaven and earth to get that results. It blows up in our face. We discover later that we lacked important facts that would have supported an effective deductive decision that didn't seem necessary since it felt OK.
3. Testimony (the sole basis of beliefs) provides all the information necessary to make an OK decision. Someone dies. Its discovered that someone else well known and trusted by all, lied. So much for truth in advertising. What do we say then? Oh, well....?20 of these things happen to us every day. We trust our feelings as we should; I mean that. So what is going so wrong?
We were induced with information as a child. It was a successful childhood experience. However, our parents forget to tell us to not wait around as adults for someone to induce information, since we are old enough to deduce on our own. Did I leave out the part about my parents had no idea that this was important? I'm 52 and still keep finding new puzzle pieces daily; hourly.
A shrink from Minneapolis had a tape series in the 80's where he asked some of these same questions. What he came up with is that normal parenting in America had stopped including a (healthy) rite of passage ritual several years before. The purpose in many cultures for this ritual is to identify the differences in problem solving as a young adult as opposed to that of childhood. This sends the young adult off on their own for the first time allowing them to honor their newly acquired skils and attributes (via the "geneitc God"). Shades of Jean Piaget.....
I have found that I become most effective in my 20 odd per day conflicts when and if I am balanced. What I'm saying is not heresy to either side of the human brain, left or right. If the right-brain is more for feelings and the left-brain is more for logic, I am most successful when I turn both sides of my brain loose on a problem. So, the theory is to approach each and every conflict armed with all our skills and senses and use feelings and logic to the best of their abilities, always checking with the other side to hold onto the essence of harmony and balance.
Today my right-brain might take responsibility for only three decisions, whereas the left-brain took on maybe eight challenges. That means that the left and right solved the remaining problems in concert, sharing the load of the problem solving process.
See, I knew I could be short and quick!!!
Rod
poster:64Bowtie
thread:326975
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040321/msgs/327804.html