concrete thinking

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Be Empathic to Others to Get Friendly With Yourself

 

Drawn by early 20th-century commercial cat ill...

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Self-Care tip #79 – Be empathic to others.  Be a friend to yourself.

Yesterday I wrote about considering intent and context when comparing self-care with selfishness.  That carries over to the people sharing life with those of us who have mental illness.  Do they see us as selfish?  For example, how is the spouse of the Panic Disorder going to make sense of the 40 phone-calls he gets while at work?

Mary’s husband told me that she’s been calling him “all day,” terrified she was going to die.  Checking to see when he was coming home.  She couldn’t go to the market because people would laugh at her.  Afraid.  Afraid.  Just plain afraid.  Really, everything had become about her.  She was like a scared kid.  Frankly it was annoying.  He was in a stressful work situation with the economy slumping.  People he knew were being laid off.  The other day he had to leave in the middle of an important job to go home and reassure her.  She was sobbing in the living room.  Sure she was going crazy.  He realized that he might have to tell his boss what was going on but what was going on?!  Who had his wife turned into.

In yesterday’s blog, we spoke about the ability to abstract v. concrete thinking.  Being able to abstract helps with empathy – connecting emotional content between people.  To put yourself in someone else’s shoes, as if you were them.  This is a critical part of relating, i.e. being in a relationship.  Many different mind illnesses affect our ability to abstract, including panic disorder.

In Mary’s case, she was not empathic when she was anxious.  She was thinking about herself.  Understandably, if you read the part about her believing she was going to die or go crazy.  But when you’re married to her, empathizing with her gets old.  It’s not so easy when it seeps into your work life, you haven’t had sex for months, and you have to do everything that has anything to do with going outside of the home.  Some part of you knows it’s not true, but another part of you screams, “Get over it you selfish child!”

Is Mary selfish?  Some might be able to answer even after all the phone-calls and unrecognizable behaviors, no.  Mary is not selfish.  They can do this specifically because they can abstract.  They can empathize.  They can consider the context of Mary’s disease and the intent of her behaviors.

Not everyone does this.  Not everyone is able to let “It” be about someone else.  Not everyone doesn’t have to have “It” be about them.

The best thing for those in relationships with someone emotionally ill, is to view the way they are behaving as biological.  When treated medically, than Mary or whoever it is in your life can do their own self-care.  But until then, staying in their lives requires maintaining an empathic view that considers intent and context.  It also means furthermore, doing your own self-care individually.

There are over-lapping flaps to our lives.  Scales on the back of an armadillo.  Me as encased by my body.  Me, that includes the space between me and you.  Me, that includes you, because you will always be a part of me.  Self-care really involves all that by degrees.  A chain-link.

So the question is, can empathy be chosen?  With money in the bank and wisdom, yes.

Self-Care tip #79 – Be empathic to others.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question:  Does any of this ring true for you?  Please tell me your story.

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Intent and Context Matter

 

A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

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Self-care is selfless, but doing things for yourself is not always self-care.

A reader commented, “I believe that if I’m NOT taking care of myself and feeling joy, then that IS self-centered….”  Too eloquent.  Love it.

Some of our confusion comes from the changing scenarios of self care.  The intent sometimes gets blurry.  The intent is hard to tease apart.  Sometimes what feels like taking care of ourselves is in fact, selfish.  For example, let’s say “hypothetically,” my husband, who is a palliative care specialist, chooses to work on twitter #hpm, play chess, or play guitar.  This is potentially positive and friendly to the self.  However, it depends on intent.  Sometimes we don’t know our own intent though.

There is also the context of what is happening.  Let’s say we were all fighting, and then my husband goes off to read Oscar Wilde.   Is this self-care or a way of abandoning and taking himself out of the present?  Self-care puts us into the present.  Whereas selfishness takes us out.

In another context, taking yourself out of the present is necessary to ultimately put yourself back in.  Doing this requires thought processes that can abstract and empathize (connect emotional content).

I rely a lot on intent! (Ahem!)

There is a mind disease called schizophrenia.  This disease is famous for hallucinations, hearing voices that other people don’t hear, seeing things that other people don’t see.  However the core symptom of schizophrenia is less famous.  It is the thought form, concrete and disconnected.

Concrete thinking is named well, unlike many other medical conditions.  (Think diabetes!  Who would know what that has anything to do with!?)  But concrete thinking is plain, hard, and flat like my sidewalk.  For example, if I asked what does the parable mean, “A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush?”

  1. Concrete thinkers might say, “Birds make a mess so we don’t want a lot of them.”
  2. Further, if their thoughts are also not connected, they might say, “Birds migrate in the winter and the bush is wet.”
  3. Contrast this to connected thought that abstracts, being able to answer, “If I have an opportunity to take something good, it’s better to take it than gamble for what I might not be able to keep in the end.”

Different emotional illnesses have trouble abstracting, but fewer have disconnected thoughts like schizophrenia.

If you are in a relationship with someone who has trouble abstracting (traumatic brain injury) and/or connecting emotional content (ADHD for example,) you might misinterpret his or her behaviors as selfish.  Being able to empathize after all is part of most Disney fairy-tail romances.  What more do any of us want?  Right?

Wrong.  The capacity to empathize doesn’t matter much if the intent is missing.

Wrong.  The ability to abstract doesn’t connect if the intent to connect us is not there.  The knowledge does not matter.  It is the context.

In the film, A Beautiful Mind, Russel Crowe plays a character that suffers from schizophrenia.  The woman who loves him, struggles to understand the way he loves her back.  His disease steals his attention.  His disease takes his time.  He seems selfish.  Their love survives when she discovers his intent in context.  He stays present in the relationship, despite all his limited capacity to relate.  Further, agreeing to the treatments of his generation, limited that they are, he is doing selfless self-care.

At the end of the day, I’m a grateful piece of dirt who means well.  Saying that up front immediately lets you get very familiar with me.  (I could have said “grateful piece of sh–,” but that would have been selfish.  The s-bomb is just playing with the word to have fun!)  Part of why I believe in God is because I know He goes for the losers.  He goes for the piece of craps out there.  That’s what the beatitudes are about.  He pours it on. (Intent and context, baby!)  At the end of the day, we are neither angel nor beast.  We are just human to Him.

Self-Care Tip #78 – Keep self-care selfless.  Be a friend to yourself. 😉

Question:  What do you think?  Please tell me your thoughts.  Please tell me your story.