I had a good therapy session with the shrink who doesn’t let me beat around the bush today. We talked a lot about being judgmental because I told him how I have been grappling with the decision of whether or not to include the story of my psychologically grueling one day experiment of sitting in the backyard and photographing all the birds. I’ve been going back-and-forth and back-and-forth about including the narrative and I finally I reached out to Evan because he is the only person who has really held and leafed through the book. Evan asked me what I was afraid was going to happen if I didn’t include my own personal story and a gigantic lightbulb just exploded in the sky over my head. It all boils down to the pictures giving a very different perspective of the day then my experience of the day and my fear of being judged as being inauthentic or a fraud if I don’t inform the viewer that they are welcome to have their own experience with the images but it wasn’t mine.
So the shrink and I had a big discussion on judgment and feeling judged and being judgmental and he pointed out some language I used when I talk about myself and how I am constantly judging my own actions and behaviors and I feel like this may have been a little bit of a breakthrough. My job now is to pay attention when my inner voice tells me I “should” do something and question my motives.
The shrink tells me all of the time how common my behaviors are for people who were abused or neglected and MAN, DO I HATE HEARING THAT!! Apparently my childhood messed up my wiring and I have to become acutely aware of the damage in order to deal with it. I would like to remove those behaviors like a big coat, let them slip to the floor behind me and simply walk away. I wish this wasn’t so hard.
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