Sans Fig Leaf
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"Change(less)"
7 April, 2005
Some years ago, when I was going through some difficulties, I started going to a support group. Once a week a group of us dealing with a similar problem would meet to talk, vent, share, maybe give either other advice. It helped.
I can't point to any specific advice anyone gave me at one of those meetings that solved my problem. There were no moments of great revelation. But there were guys there who were going through what I was going through. They were willing to talk about it, willing to admit to feeling angry or helpless in the face of the problems, and willing to listen. And sometimes you just need someone who will listen.
It's not entirely true that I had no moments of revelation, because there were epiphanies. But my epiphanies had nothing to do with the problem we were all there to face.
I realized after I'd been going for a while that a couple of the guys in the group had been attending the same support group for over ten years. At first I thought that they had both stayed with the group out of a feeling of payback. They were there to help other people face the same problems they had overcome.
But as weeks went by, I realized that neither of the guys, let's call them "elders" had overcome the problem. They just processed and processed and processed the problem over and over. They weren't getting on with their lives.
I also learned that the two elders weren't just involved in the support group. Both of them attended lots of workshops, retreats, and even therapy sessions, all for dealing with the same problem. And they'd been doing it for over ten years. They weren't getting on with their lives. They didn't really have lives, because all of their social activities were centered around the support group.
As I said, I found the group helpful. It was good to have the opportunity to vent without fear. It was good to hear other people's perspective. But the most important lesson I learned from the group was entirely unintentional. I became quite convinced that there was no way I wanted to get trapped in the emotional mire that those two long-standing members were in. And that several others who had been going for long periods of time were also falling into.
When I reached that conclusion, I didn't quit right away. I wasn't sure that just walking away from the group were enough. I wanted to see if I could figure out why they couldn't perceive that there was a way to get over it and get on with life.
The answer came when one of the guys in the group was talking about a specific argument he had gotten into with a family member. The two elders soon got into an argument with the guy, until finally one of them said, "You're never going to be happy until you accept the fact that you can't change who you are, you can't change how you feel, and you can't change what you want."
And that was when the pattern fell into place. Every time they had discussed one of their own problems, nothing was ever their fault; it was always other people who couldn't deal with the situation, other people who put unrealistic expectations on them, other people who failed to appreciate the unique and terrible anguish they felt. Whenever someone else's situation was under discussion, the advice they weighed in with always dealt with coping, covering up, avoiding confrontations, or getting someone else to accept blame.
I asked a few questions when I had a chance, just to see if I was understanding them correctly. I was. And that was the last time I attended the group.
That was fourteen years ago. Recently I ran into one of the guys from the group online. The group is still meeting. One of the elders is still attending every week, regular as clockwork. The other elder had attended right up to the week before he died.
And the guy I was talking to was also still attending. He was very chatty, going on and on about the horrible problems he faced every week, how almost no one understood how difficult things were for him--except the guys in the support group, and his therapist, and the guys in his other counselling group. As far as I could tell, nothing about him or his situation had changed in all this time.
I always thought that the point of any kind of therapy was to heal or to solve a problem. Not everything is curable, but the treatment should be a means to something better, not an end in itself.
--King Whitney Jr.