Whatever became of...

  

After all those leading roles in every play during high school,is it any wonder that my sister went on to get a Bachelor of Fine Art in theater and is now a professional actor and Drama Teacher (both at a high school and at her own school for actors-  link here to see her school  http://njactors.org/faculty.html)

My brother's growth got un-stunted after my family moved to St. Charles and he got to have a real bedroom.  He is now 6'5" and is the band teacher/director at Camdenton High School at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri.  

If you have read my blog, you will know, that after a (very brief) attempt to major in Music at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, Mo, I ended up becoming a Psychotherapist.  I actually have a double major in Music and psychology-but now I only use my music degree to write myself mnemonic devices.  

So how did those two end up in the arts and I end up in Social Work? 

Remember the great nurture  versus nature question?  Well this is where is plays out.

I am a big believer in attachment theory.  John Bowlby postulated (Invented?  Came up with?) attachment theory watching chimps or apes or something.  He noticed that the little chimps/apes/monkeys sought the grown-ups in order to avoid being some lion's lunch and to be fed, bathed and kept free of vermin.  He also noticed that the baby primates were choosing their own mother over the other adults.  I don't know about you, but one monkey looks pretty much the same as another monkey to me.  And, lo and behold, the Mama monkeys could discern their own babies, too!

Bowlby also noticed that the babies didn't just seek out their own personal parent money when danger was present or they needed a snack or to have nits picked off their back.  The monkeys went to their moms for a hug after a fight with their monkey friends or they got a monkey boo-boo after falling out of a tree or something.  The monkeys wanted cuddles as much as they wanted bananas!

From monkeys to humans, observation and research proved that people needed someone to attach to as well.  You must have heard about the importance of bonding with your baby.  Bonding is how you feel about that small wrinkled amorphous blob of a person that just emerged from your body.  Bonding is one sided.  The small amorphous pointed headed creature suddenly turns into the cutest smartest funniest being who ever walked the earth and everyone must see this most incredible baby you created. (No really!  They must!  You have the stacks of pictures and videos and Facebook pages and websites just to prove that no other baby even comes close...)  That's bonding,  It's pretty one-sided.

Attachment goes both ways.  Bonding is what makes you want to nurture you amazing creation.  Attachment makes your amazing creation think you are pretty great, too.  Attachment creates the type of nurturing you get.

I could go on all day about attachment theory and what happens to screw it up and how other researchers found differing types of attachment etc.  But What I really want t say is that being attached creates good nurture and nurture brings out our nature.

I don't think the argument of nurture being more important than nature (or vice versa) is stated correctly.  I think nurture allows us to reach our own natural potential for intelligence, talent, drive ability to choose and ability to love and be loved.

In my most amazing family, we were allowed to become our nature and chose our path accordingly.

Enough for today.  Tune in next time for more on attachment and less boring stuff, as well.

Just a word about aging

The other day, I was getting new glasses at Costco (best deal in town, BTW).  David Bowie's Let's Dance was playing in the background.  The (very) young adult women helping me pick out my glasses looked at me and said, "I can't think of this singer.  It's driving me crazy". She didn't know David Bowie!!??  I realizes that David Bowie is no longer a household name and his groundbreaking androgyny is no longer relevant or shocking.  She couldn't recall his name just like I may wonder who sings Rock Around the Clock or I Left my Heart in Sam Fransciso...

My God, I saw David Bowie in concert (The Glass Spider tour for all the other aging hipsters out there).  I was back stage at a Heart Concert.  I had hip clothes like Esprit and Hang Ten and said thing like "Way Cool" and read the Preppie Handbook.  I had a light up Goose lamp before the old ladies started dressing them in costumes for the holidays.  I know who Divine and John Waters are.  I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show and threw toast and did the Time Warp, Dammit!  I am a hip person....Who happens to be 51 and walks with a limp and wears Women's sized clothing from the Talbots outlet and drinks Metamucil every day and...

Just remember kids, someday,when you are feeling pretty good about yourself, you will hear Vampire Weekend and Nine Inch nails on the oldies station and the new groups will have names like Nintendo Cloud Burst or Knex the Dots because that is what the kids in the bands played with as small children. And the groups you think of as cutting edge or just edgy in general  will be quaint and old fashioned.

One of the guys I dated used to make fun of old people sometimes.  I told him that it was rude and he just laughed and said, It's okay.  Somebody will make fun of you, too, someday.  Well, that someday is now.

I was at the Goodwill (The GW, as my sister-in-law calls it and don't laugh.  I have gotten at least 5 cashmere sweaters and a leather backpack purse there!).  There were two barely-out-of-their teen girls at the counter.  One looked at the other and said HDA and laughed!  HDA?!  I used to work in retail at cool stores in Kansas City!  I know what HDA is!  Hairdo Alert!  It's code for "Check out this chick's terrible hair!"! (We also used to page Mrs. McGillicutty to the front when someone really bizarre came in).  These girls were making fun of my hair!  Granted, I had just come from a hectic Play Therapy session and the girls were throwing glitter and playing hairstylist on me.  So I was probably not displaying the best grooming.  But, really?!!


But here's a good thing about aging.  I really didn't care so much what they thought..  I was happy to have been able to use Play Therapy with those girls  they needed an outlet and they needed an adult who was not judgmental and who did not yell at them for making a mess.  The girls behind the counter didn't know my back story and I didn't really care.

Have you ever heard the 16-36-66 rule?  It says:  At 16, you worry about what everyone else is thinking about you.  At 36, you don't care what everyone else is thinking about you and at 66, you realize that no one was ever thinking about you at all!  If I follow that rule, HDA could have stood for Hard Drink After work or Help do accounting after this, or Hot Damn All Done for today.  Who knows...

Aging and living in an old body has its difficulties, of course, but when all is said and done, I do prefer it to the alternative!

New year

Yesterday was my birthday, so it makes sense that my personal new year starts today.  My New Years resolution is to write everyday and post at least once a week. Most resolutions start off with enthusiasm and determination, but by February, the treadmill has become a tread-nil and the jumbo bag of chips is taking up space in the grocery cart once again.

I actually have made at least two resolutions that stuck around.  I actually do go "workout" at least 4 times a week and I did write a "poem" about Sarge the dog  every day for year.  I use the terms "workout " and "poem" loosely, because, arguably, my workouts are not all that...workout-y and the Sarge poem were really just rhyming phrases.  But I did write one of them every day for a year.  You try it and see how you do after a couple of weeks and then tell me they are not really poems!

I have writing topics in my head, but I over-think stuff and get stuck.  I try to get too pedantic and critical.of my erudition and start to use words like "pedantic" and "erudition" instead of just writing my thoughts.  So expect my posts to be a little disjointed and tangential sometimes.  Otherwise, they start to sound as if I am writing reports for juvenile court (a task I have done frequently) and I start to write run-on sentences and use terms like "tangential"...

Now that I have gotten myself back to the correct frame of mind for my blog-style, here is what I have been thinking about lately:

There are some pressing questions the world has long debated. You know, stuff like the chicken or the egg; is there really a God, (or if you are a dyslexic existentialist, is there really a Dog); when do you actually use a semi-colon in a sentence; and my personal favorite, which way does the toilet paper roll hang?   Over the top or down the back?  (The correct answer is over the top, for Dog's sake).

My other personal favorite pressing question is  Nature or Nurture.  According to Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places or Arnold Swartzanegger and Danny DeVito in Twins, nurture wins out. I thought this way myself for a long time. I wonder if every naive psychology student thinks they have it all figured out.  I had the nurture v nature discussion once with my Great Uncle Al.  Uncle Al was the youngest of ten  He was a psychiatrist when every other sibling was a minister or a minister's wife.  He used to say that he become a psychiatrist in order to take care of all those crazy minister!  When I told him my thoughts on nurture trumping nature, he just laughed and said, "Just wait". He was that kind of guy  Very droll and thoughtful.  Miss him...

Now I get what he meant and I think we are set up for our potential by nature, and nurture helps us to reach that potential,  I think that very good nurture can ameliorate bad nature, but I think that very good nature doesn't stand a snowball's chance against terrible nurture.  But mostly I think that nature wins out in the end.

Since this started off as a blog about having MS, I can safely say that nature can sometimes kick you butt, but I as a psychotherapist, I know that nurture, and specifically connections and attachments can go a log way in managing what nature hands you.

Tomorrow I will write more about my own family and seeing nature being created though nurture, but for today, I hace net my resolution goal and I feel proud!