The Spirit Catches Me & You Get Knocked Down

There's something I've been learning about myself over the past few years. I didn't have a name for whatever it is I seem to do to people just with the sheer force of my personhood, but I was certainly aware that there was something about me which prompts extreme and polarizing things in people.

I always felt like I wasn't doing much of anything one way or another, but thought I certainly must have *worked* at offending those people who hated me -- even if I had no recollection of doing so. It's always been a mystery to me why so many people in this world have spit-polished their guillotines while sizing up my fair neck.

By the same token, I've long been utterly and completely mystified by the people who have become my friends. There's no rhyme or reason to the assemblage, and I never understood what attracts people to me. Especially those who seemed a bit ... ardent (and there have been a few).

The past couple weeks, however, have provided an opportunity to take a closer look at my polarizing capabilities.

I took on that slanderous evaluation with one of the instructors who wrote it and made clear my displeasure with it. She kept telling me there was a "bigger picture" and that it was a shame I was not "getting it."

In the process, she tried to saddle me with the idea that my colleagues were not being honest with me. HGM was right when he said my instructor engaged in "psychological malfeasance" when she tried to undermine my trust in my colleagues. Really, it was a wretched experience to come face-to-face with another one of those guillotine people and have to listen to squishy feedback that amounts to little more than, "We just don't like you (and neither do your peers). Neener neener neener...!"

I gave that woman a talking to the likes of which you people have never seen me dish up to anyone. I turned on my Bigger, Bad-Ass Revolutionary Lawyer Self and let 'er rip! I didn't cuss; I didn't use invective; and I didn't pull any punches. I let her know she had offended my deepest sense of morality and that my peers disagreed with her assessment that I had made the classroom environment "unsafe."

Watching her stubborn refusal -- even at the beginning, when I was questioning her quietly and openly -- to give one inch of consideration to the idea that *she* may also not be seeing "the bigger picture," I had to ask myself what I had done to evoke such replusion in this woman.

Here is an interesting part of the story:

In the opening round of questioning, I said, It appears you have no qualms with my clinical work, but it seems you do have objections to something that was happening at the conference table. (The conference table was in the classroom, where we discussed theory and practice with one another.) She nodded in agreement, as I continued, Tell me what your concern is.

She turned to a page in the back of the evaluation and read aloud, "Your eagerness to share an idea or an opinion can have a powerful effect on your clients, so awareness of that tendancy will be helpful." Then she looked at me. "If you substitute the word 'clients' with the word 'peer,' it's the same situation, the same concern."

Hmmm.

I know I'm not supposed to rattle clients with a bunch of ideas and opinions, so I do hold back quite a lot. I try to keep my ideas to myself, and help the client to find their own ideas. (I say "try to," because I recognize that even the questions we ask can be seen by clients as "suggestions.") Communication has many, many layers, and I imagine it's a good therapist's lifelong art process to have increasing awareness of those layers and to work within them.

One of the things our instructors imparted to us in practicum class is the notion that a client will tell you the thing they really want to tell you right up at the beginning of the session. It might be hidden in a lot of subtext, but these seasoned professionals say it's usually there.

So when I look back on the conversation-turned-revolutionary-lawyerspeak of the other day, I think about that first thing the instructor told me. The first thing she mentioned is a concern that my ideas and opinions "can have a powerful effect" on my colleagues.

Let's stop and think about that for a moment.

What the hell is so wrong with that? Are my ideas bad ones? Are my opinions outrageous?

It's important to note that I do NOT criticize the personhood of my peers. I do not question their role as the stand-in expert on their client (the client being the only real expert). I talk very little about the approach they used with a client, but will discuss client conceptualization freely.

So if under the circumstances, what I'm saying is neither bad nor outrageous nor illegal nor personally disrespectful, why and how am I to be held responsible for the "powerful effects" of my ideas and opinions? And what's wrong with an idea having a "powerful effect" anyway? Since when is that a crime?

Suddenly, looking at these questions, I feel an absurd (but logical and worrisome) kinship with Gallileo and anyone else who ever questioned the Church or the establishment.

Looked through this lens, the first thing my instructor chose to tell me about my evaluation is: "Your ideas are dangerous, madam!"

If the first thing said is the most important, does that mean the thing which frightens my professors so is that my peers might be listening to me?

Can that be for real?

Here's the other part of the story:

She was right. There was a bigger picture that I wasn't getting.

The exploration I've undertaken -- via the input of school colleagues and friends -- around why these instructors find me disrespectful and think I make the class "unsafe" has brought a new image of myself into focus.

We all have blindspots, and it can take something like this to point one out to us.

(I wish my teacher could read that sentence I just wrote and sense her righteousness for a moment. Because it would please me to crush her smugness with the following:)

Some people love me for the same exact reason that others hate or fear me. S2 said this to me the other night when I implored her to give me the straightest feedback she could manage.

"To be honest, I don't understand this feedback you're getting, and I really don't understand what they want you to do with it," she said. "But what I can tell you is that you have powerful energy that can fill up a room -- or just as easily bring it all down if your energy is pointed that direction."

I know this, but I also know I hadn't "brought it all down" this term. I enjoyed class for the most part. It was captivating to watch my peers do their work, and I loved discussing it.

But S2 was onto something. Her comments echoed ideas I have heard time and again. One colleague said her first impression of me was that I was "a force to be reckoned with," and that I "put myself forward with force." By this, she clarified, she did not mean that I was intentionally dominating a room or being rude. Rather, it was the density of my ideas, the succinct and powerful language with which I can express them in class and then some ineffable personality traits that people often summarize with the term "character."

"You're so obviously not from Portland," True Tomato (formerly the Classmate with No Nickname) told me. "You're a woman from the South." (She initiated our friendship by telling me that it was only when she learned I was from Texas that I started to "make sense" to her.)

I think she's got a point. My friend King Rex, native of New Orleans, doesn't seem to find me the least bit peculiar.

So there's something "cultural" in my presentation that makes me look a bit more colorful in character here than I might be if I were living where I grew up.

Whatever the hell is is about me -- call it energy, force, intensity, character, charisma -- that seems to stand out from the crowd is also what, as S2 notes, drives some people to love me and others to hate me.

Interestingly, many of my friends and colleagues reported feeling provoked by me before they got to know me. "Even though you didn't seem to notice me, I thought you might be not noticing me on purpose," one said. "I had a lot of projection around you. I was actually a bit fixated on you in the beginning because the way you were affecting me was so strong that I was fascinated by it. I wanted to know why, but I still can't explain it."

When I repeated this to S2, she told me she imagined that was a common experience for people to have around me, even if they can't describe it so clearly. "I don't think it's anything you can control or change," S2 said. "I think it's just the way you are. People react to you."

She also noted that I don't usually put my "best" part forward when it comes to intellectual discussions in class. I agree with this insight, but I also know that my "best" part is, in its tenderness and openness, a little too intimate for a lot of people. It's also a little too soft and exposed for me to share it willy-nilly. However, I think those two selves are fluid and cross into each other's space regularly, so that people who are paying attention and aren't overwhelmed by their projectsions about me end up seeing a more complex picture.

But even if you divide me into private ("best) and public personas, both still retain that "character." My public persona is not rude, disrespectful or mean-spirited. But it is outspoken. As is my private self. Both still speak directly, and both still regard the world with a probing intellectualism. And I think *that* is what provokes people.

(Should I attempt to change my personality just to make sure everyone around me feels comfortable? I don't think so. Variety makes life interesting. I should not have to become, in the words of one friend, "wall-to-wall beige" just so those who fit that description themselves can approve of me.)

My exploration further revealed that the key to whether people end up liking me or hating me seems to be whether they get to know me. Even if just on the middle ground between my private and public personas.

And this is the part of the lesson that would make my teacher's head spin. What I learned is that even though I seem to provoke emotional reactions in people, those who get to know me even just a little bit tend to use some rather glowing words to describe me:

Warm. Genuine. Open-hearted. Generous. Compassionate. Intelligent. Respectful. Caring. Tender. Big-hearted. Funny. Spirited. Colorful. Kind.

Repeatedly, my friends have told me that these instructors (who defamed my character by suggesting my respect for humanity is only "emerging") have obviously and clearly misunderstood me. "It's the only logical explanation," said one.

(S2 offered a sage piece of advice: "It will have to be your lifelong goal to always ensure that anyone doing an evaluation on you, anyone who supervises you, actually gets to know you." I'll have to do that.)

But in this feedback from my friends, I also note a word commonly used to describe me: "powerful."

Same word my teachers used in stating their concern about the influence of my ideas and opinions upon my peers. First reason they gave for what they think is wrong with me. Justification for why they have "reservations" about my ability to proceed in this line of work.

What message *should* I be "getting" here? What *is* the "bigger picture"?