“This organization sounds intriguing. Unfortunately, we’ve already contributed all we can this year.”
Or,
“I’d love to help. It sounds like a great cause. Unfortunately, I have too many obligations right now to be able to contribute any time to this.”
Contributing to worthy organizations is a wonderful thing to do. But if you let yourself become tapped out energetically or financially, you may have nothing left for yourself or those closest to you. It’s important to know your limits, and there’s nothing unworthy about saying so.
Parental neglect or abuse can cause a child to toughen up, but often at the expense of the child shutting down feelings of empathy and love as well. Some parents never apologize to their children or admit to themselves that their actions have any impact on their kids, even if they knowingly mistreat or neglect them. Others cater to their children’s every whim causing them to become dependent and entitled.
Parents clearly have an impact on their children, but not every mistake they make has a profound negative effect on them. Children are very resilient.
It appears that the best parents are those who are conscientious about avoiding the extremes, but without being overly concerned about being perfect. There’s no way to avoid making mistakes. In fact, it turns out to be good for children if their parents make some mistakes, especially if they acknowledge the more significant mistakes.
Child psychologist Donald Winnicott coined the phrase “good-enough mothering,” which means that ordinary caring of a child by a devoted parent is healthiest for the child. Children who as infants were picked up and held when they were in distress thrive. Yet, some parental “mistakes” including moderate anger, mild neglect, and delays in response enable children to learn that they can handle the anxiety that accompanies uncertainty and difficulties in life.
Ideally, children learn to handle frustration and stress in their lives gradually. Obviously, infants need much more immediate love, care, and attention than older children. For example, while it’s all right to let a baby wait briefly before responding to his or her crying, teenagers should be able to handle waiting much longer to have their needs responded to.
Later in life, a person who has developed resiliency without losing access to feelings can handle people who are difficult, controlling, or unreliable with the confidence that comes with the ability to handle stress.
All children experience some pain as a result of their parents’ anger, lack of care, and other imperfections. Those experiences are in part what makes them capable of surviving in a world that is not a bed of roses. If we’re too careful as parents, children don’t learn to deal with life’s difficulties on their own. A little stress can be a good thing.
Our natural tendency is to trust, because, as infants, we trust our parents. It feels good to really trust. It is also an essential component of love and an important test thereof. Love without trust is dependence masquerading as love.
We must trust, it is almost biological. Most of the time, we do trust. We trust the universe to behave according to the laws of physics, soldiers to not go mad and shoot at us, our nearest and dearest to not betray us. When our trust is broken, we feel as though a part of us had died and had been hollowed out.
To not trust is abnormal and is the outcome of bitter or even traumatic life experiences. Mistrust or distrust are induced not by our own thoughts, nor by some device or machination of ours — but by life’s sad circumstances. To continue to not trust is to reward the people who had wronged us and rendered us distrustful in the first place. Those people have long abandoned us and yet they still have a great, malign, influence on our lives. This is the irony of being distrustful of others.
So, some of us prefer to not experience that sinking feeling of trust violated. Some people choose to not trust and thus skirt disappointment. This is both a fallacy and a folly. Trusting releases enormous amounts of mental energy, which is more productively vested elsewhere. But trust — like knives — can be dangerous to your health if used improperly.
You have to know WHO to trust, you have to learn HOW to trust and you have to know HOW to CONFIRM the existence of a mutual, functional sort of trust.
People often disappoint and are not worthy of trust. Some of them act arbitrarily, treacherously and viciously, or, worse, offhandedly. You have to select the targets of your trust carefully. He who has the most common interests with you, who is invested in you for the long haul, who is incapable of breaching trust (“a good person”), who doesn’t have much to gain from betraying you — is not likely to mislead you. These people you can trust.
You should not trust indiscriminately. No one is completely trustworthy in all fields. Most often our disappointments stem from our inability to separate one realm of life from another. A person could be sexually loyal — but utterly dangerous when it comes to money (for instance, a gambler). Or a good, reliable father — but a womanizer. You can trust someone to carry out some types of activities — but not others (because they are more complicated, more boring, or do not conform to his values.)
We should not trust with reservations: this is the kind of “trust” that is common in business and among criminals and its source is rational. Game Theory in mathematics deals with questions of calculated trust.
If we do trust, we should trust wholeheartedly and unreservedly. But, we should be discerning. Then we will be rarely disappointed.
As opposed to popular opinion, trust must be put to the test, lest it goes stale and staid. We are all somewhat paranoid. We gradually grow suspicious, inadvertently hunt for clues of infidelity or worse. The more often we successfully test the trust we had established, the stronger our pattern-prone brain embraces it. Constantly in a precarious balance, our brain needs and devours reinforcements. Such testing should not be explicit but circumstantial: your husband could easily have had a mistress or your partner could easily have robbed you blind — and, yet, they haven’t. They have passed the test. They have resisted the temptation.
Trust is based on the ability to foretell the future. It is not so much the act of betrayal that we react to as it is the feeling that the very foundations of our world are crumbling, that it is no longer safe because it is no longer predictable.
Here is another important lesson: whatever the act of betrayal (with the exception of grave criminal corporeal acts), it has limited and reversible consequences if you do not let it get out of hand.
Naturally, we tend to exaggerate the importance of such mishaps. This serves a double purpose: indirectly it aggrandizes us. If we are “worthy” of such an unprecedented, unheard of, major betrayal we must be worthwhile and unique. The magnitude of the betrayal reflects on us and re-establishes the fragile balance of powers between us and the universe.
The second purpose of exaggerating the act of perfidy is simply to gain sympathy and empathy — mainly from ourselves, but also from others. Catastrophes are a dozen a dime and in today’s world it is difficult to provoke anyone to regard your personal disaster as anything exceptional.
Amplifying the event has, therefore, some very utilitarian purposes. But, finally, blowing things out of proportion poisons the victim’s mental circuitry. Putting a breach of trust in perspective goes a long way towards the commencement of a healing process. No betrayal stamps the world irreversibly or eliminates all other possibilities, opportunities, chances and people. Time goes by, people meet and part, lovers quarrel and make love, dear ones live and die. It is the very essence of time that it reduces us all to the finest dust. Our only weapon — however crude and naîve — against this inexorable process is to trust each other.
Complacency often causes people to make the following types of comments:
“That wasn’t very hard.”
“You should see what Joan’s husband gets done on the weekend!“
“Well, that’s what a woman is supposed to do!”
“I make dinner all the time!”
“That’s nothing. You should see what I got done today!”
It’s as disheartening to have your efforts dismissed as it is to have them completely ignored. Discounting or ignoring the contributions of others causes people to feel insignificant, defensive, and resentful, which results in:
1. Their withholding further effort,
2. Feeling bad about themselves,
3. Becoming critical,
4. Withholding appreciation for others, and
5. Holding back love.
In contrast, the more a person recognizes the efforts of others, the more good-will they build up. Instead of feeling downcast, defeatist, and defiant, people who are appreciated become confident, cheerful, and giving.
Another benefit to showing plenty of appreciation is that it becomes easier to provide occasional constructive criticism without causing hurt.
If you fall into a pattern where each person disregards or ignores the efforts of the other, it takes enormous determination to break out of that pattern. For a difficult period of time, it may be a one-way street of recognizing the positive in the other person before you receive some appreciation yourself. It helps to remember that people who are unappreciative and cynical are simply protecting their own vulnerability.
If the other person says, “So what? I do a lot too,” you can respond, “I know you do a lot, and I appreciate that. However, it makes me feel better, even happy, when you recognize the things I do as well.”
You may have to ask for some appreciation — without sounding whiney or demanding. You could ask with a smile, “How do you like the delicious dinner I made?” Or “I worked really hard today; I need some love and appreciation.” Such requests should be made with kindness and gratitude because any hint of criticism or complaint may cause a backlash of ill will.
We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.
