THE SELF-CONFIDENCE DISORDER.

...... Just imagine: you are 16 years old. You are not ignorant. I mean, you know what sex is supposed to be about. But this is your first date. You are going to meet this gorgeous person of the opposite sex; and it’s your first date – ever !
.......If you didn’t feel nervous you wouldn’t be normal. I mean, you definitely wouldn’t be normal, would you?
.......Or suppose you are a teacher. You’ve been teaching for 30 years. But you are about to walk into this new classroom with a sea of adolescent eyes staring at you – and there is no way of knowing what they are thinking or what they will do. I don’t care who you are, you wouldn’t be normal if you weren’t nervous.
.......Or a more mundane scene: you are in bed with your partner and feeling a bit randy, but unsure how she is feeling, I mean headache-wise. Do you make a move and risk it or not? To be completely relax in this situation is not normal. If you don’t feel nervous here something is wrong. Why do I say this? Surely if you have grown used to someone you should feel intimate and relaxed. True!
........But to feel completely relaxed is to be pretty sure what is going to happen. What will happen will be the same thing that happened last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. Repetition is the guarantee of safety. Which is fine, but if you feel too safe your nerve ends aren’t tingling. Sex in the mortuary – that’s what’ wrong.
........If you don’t feel nervous in a situation there is nothing at stake; and in matters of love you should feel that your whole existence is at stake, otherwise there is something wrong. Similarly in therapy. If you are a therapist, like me, you feel nervous at the start of every session. In five minutes I will start a session with another human being. Not only is the client’s life at stake, mine is too. Not in the sense that I must prove myself. But therapy goes to the root of one’s life, of one’s existence. One risks quite a lot because one never knows. Neither party knows. That is what it’s all about. And I can’t take someone there unless I am willing to go there myself. Therapists who are self-confident are scary.
.......Same with dates, same with teachers, same with lovers, same with therapists. How can you trust or love anyone who is afflicted with a self-confidence disorder? Some good counselling is the only thing that can cure them and help achieve a greater balance of nervousness in everyday life.
.......Nervousness and excitement are two sides of the same feeling. The negative side tells me that something vitally important is going on. Rather than new strategies to overcome the nervousness, I need to come into possession of what is going on. Nervousness is a golden opportunity, because something of vital importance trying to reveal itself.

............................... Yours, Provocatively,

.................................... Stanley

CAREGIVERS.

................... by Stanley

........I am about seven years of age at a fairground in England with my mum. She pays sixpence each for us to ride on the Ghost Train – a string of small open carriages on a miniature rail line that disappears into a dark tunnel. From out of the tunnel I can hear ghoulish howls, cries and hideous laughs. The carriages start to roll towards the dark opening. I am sitting alongside my mum quietly terrified. My most vivid memory is hanging on to her arm and saying: ‘Don’t be frightened mum – I’ll look after you !’
........I won’t say I’ve have been a caregiver ever since, because my caregiving began long before that. I mean, my kind of behaviour on the Ghost Train didn’t suddenly start at seven. The picture of the child who mothers his mother is well known. And the reason is easy to see. If you are insecure, you have to take care of the one you are counting on to take care of you. Especially in any unsure and dangerous situation - which life most often is, or at least was, for me. It really is a matter of reasoned self interest.
........The kind of caring we instinctively feel safe with is the kind that has no hidden agenda, it just feels good, relaxing; but sometimes care comes with a veiled motive. Is it to make the carer feel better? One senses the caring is not congruent, it’s uncomfortable, tiring. Afterwards you feel depleted.
.........One of my problems has always been that I am nervous when being cared for, even when there is no hidden price tag. For instance, whenever I’ve been sick it’s an ordeal when someone wants to help me. I’m on edge. I’m in bed sick and I have to keep reassuring everyone I’m OK. I can’t be just looked after because I’m so busy looking after the one who’s looking after me. Now, I wonder where I got that from !
.........Caring is psychologically rich. It is an ambivalent mix of motives we would prefer to think of as simple and straightforward. Like the juice of love when seen under the microscope it is teeming with life forms, some benign and some pathogenic. Caring is always more than it seems.
.........In the business of caregiving there are those who give it and those who receive; and those who take care of others most often can’t receive it; and those who receive it most often don’t give. The selfless and the selfish often go together as a workable, but unequal pair.
........The selfish are an easy target for moral criticism. The selfless, the caregivers, are applauded; but the compulsive caregiver makes us uneasy. Their habit of always putting others first makes us feel something isn’t quite right. All you can do is tell them, “You have to look after yourself, you know.” The advice usually makes no difference.
.......In some people’s hands caring can be toxic. There are helpers whose caregiving is designed to kill. They often gravitate to the ‘helping profession’ as a perfect cover. Medical and psychological services are great hiding places. There they can practice their malevolence under the cloak of professional concern, but they can be recognized by a certain lack of generosity. They work by the book. In fact, they use the book to penalise whenever they can. If they are in any position of authority in a helping agency they will turn it into a punishment centre. Unfortunately, helping agencies are easily ‘turned’ in this way because these killers have the ability to gather ‘pieces of paper’ that qualify them for positions of control. But they are easy to spot: they have heads, but no bodies.