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» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » Taking a long, hard look at myself.

   
Author Topic: Taking a long, hard look at myself.
ElJay
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Warning: This is long and pointless, and I do not intend to tell you how the story ends. That's not the part I want to focus on. So if you can't deal with ambiguity, stop reading now. Yes, even if you're a friend or family member, so don't bother trying. I just think I need to write it, to help figure it out.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

On my way home from work there is a freeway exit ramp. It's not in the best part of town, and there are frequently panhandlers waiting at the bottom, where you have to stop for a traffic light. I turn left, and go under the freeway overpass... the left side of the road is where they stand, and usually after you get around the corner you see that there are a couple of other people waiting tucked up under the bridge. I used to think they were just waiting their turn, but driving by almost every day I've seen them rotate through. There's at least one group that seems to hang out together, that I've seen often enough to recognize. This part is mostly irrelevant, just for background. Anyway, if I'm driving home during rush hour I often hit the lock on my door as I come off the freeway there... I've had people loom close enough to my truck so as to make me uncomfortable, although no one has actually tried to open my door or anything. There are bars and clubs on either side of the freeway here, and I've walked this stretch of road maybe two or three times when I've had to park on the other side from where I was going. Always either in daylight or with a friend, I would not do it after dark by myself, period.

Today I was coming home a little after rush hour, and the spot on the left side of the road was empty. As I was pulling up to stop at the light, I noticed there was a person standing up tight against one of the bridge supports, on the sidewalk. And a group of kids, teenagers, walking towards me, so they would pass the person... I say the person, because I could not at that time, or at any point in this story, determine the person's gender. I'm going to say "she" from now on, for convenience's sake.

She had her hands shoved in the pockets of her pants, and her head down. She was wearing tan work pants, a blue denim shirt, and a gray hooded sweatshirt over it. The hood was up. She was Native American.

There were four kids, three in black and one in bright red. They were a variety of races, at least one white, at least two latino. One of them, the only one I made eye contact with, had a silver stud in the piercing I can never remember the name of, right below the lip, above the chin. He had a lot of other metal, too. At least one of them was female. They were kinda bouncing as they walked, and as they came around the pillar one of them, I think the one in red, jumped up and came down hard, pushing the person leaning against the pillar. I have no idea how they could have even known she was there, but it was definitely intentional. Shoved would be a better word than pushed. She went down hard, and curled right into a fetal position.

They all kinda paused, gathered around, and I reached to roll down my window. They looked like they were about to start kicking her, and I was flashing through options in my head, trying to decide what I was going to yell at them to get them to stop, wondering what I'd do if they came after me instead, wondering if my getting involved would only make it worse.

They didn't start kicking. They turned and moved on, walking towards my car. The light turned green right as I reached the corner, and I kept driving. As I rounded the corner, that's when I made eye contact with the one. I was paying less attention to them at that point, though, as I was looking ahead to see if the person had gotten up. No such luck.

There was no place to park. I turned around in an apartment parking lot a block and a half away, and drove back, hoping she'd be up by the time I got there. Nope.

No place to park on the other side, either. A huge crowd of people outside the Triple Rock Social Club, waiting for the show to start, and their cars taking up all the street parking. I turned down a side street, and I passed several opportunities to turn around and go back, trying to figure out what I was going to do. I crossed a street that had a bridge over the freeway, where I could have just turned and gone home without having to pass her again. When that thought flashed in my head, that's when I knew I had to find someplace to turn around and go back now, or I wouldn't do it.

I deal better with spur-of-the-moment confrontation than when I have time to prepare. It would have been a lot easier for me to get involved if the kids had started kicking her than it was since they had just left her alone. I came back around the corner... still there. You know what was going through my mind now? How can I live with my stupid, white, middle-class, privileged self if I can't stop and check on someone I saw knocked down on the side of the road. If I go home and start a thread on Hatrack, what will I call it? "I hate myself." "I'm despicable." I'm not saying Hatrack made me stop, because if it wasn't for y'all some other form of guilt would have done it. But for this evening, you played the role of my conscious.

There's a club parking lot half a block down, on the other side of the road. There's never parking there on a Thursday night when I want to go to a show, but I pulled in and there was a spot. I took my ID and a 20 out of my wallet, threw the rest in the glove compartment, and started back across the road, and under the bridge.

Some of you might be wondering why this was such a big deal to me. Here are my excuses. Like many of us, I have mild, mostly controllable OCD and slight paranoia (see wallet, above.) I'm highly functioning... it doesn't affect my life much, people usually don't notice unless I point it out. I'm not comfortable approaching strangers, even when they're not probably homeless and passed out under the freeway. I don't like disturbing people, I prefer not to even call people on the phone when I don't explicitly know they are excepting me to call and I won't disturb them, and the idea of shaking awake someone who is sleeping is totally repugnant to me, even when they might not be sleeping but rather have a concussion and need medical attention. I don't have most of the touching/germs problems, except in highly specific circumstances. In particular, I can't touch certain types of floor without washing my hands afterwards. If I drop something on my kitchen floor and pick it up, even if I only touch what I dropped and not the floor itself, I have to wash my hands. Even if I mopped the floor that same day.

As I was walking under that 6 lane overpass, the ground was covered in trash, orange peels, rotting food, glass, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts... I was cringing at the thought of touching someone who was touching that ground. I'm shuddering now typing about it. I wasn't even thinking ahead to where I was going to wash my hands, because I was focused on the fact that I'd have to clean my steering wheel after I touched it after touching this person. After reaching down and shaking them by the shoulder, to see if they were alright.

That's where I'm stopping. The rest doesn't matter. What matters, what I want to think about, is why was it so hard for me to go try to help someone? If she was seriously injured, I had driven by three times, wasted at least 5 minutes when I could have checked on her and flagged down someone with a cell phone to call 911. I've stopped to change people's tires at the side of the freeway more than once... but by definition, if someone is driving, they're of a higher socioeconomic class than this person was likely to be. So someone who needs my help less, I can give it more? How come I can get grease on my hands and not bat an eye, but imaginary germs crawling up from the pavement onto a stranger's shoulder practically paralyze me? How come I have to stop and consider the possibility that this person might try to rob me, and hide my valuables, instead of just going? Yeah, I finally stopped, driven by guilt and embarrassment about the kind of person I don't want to be and am afraid I am. I don't care, really. I care about the fact that it was so hard to make myself do it. I don't want it to be that hard. How can I change it?

I realize now that it's not fair to totally leave you hanging... the person, for what it's worth, was alive when I left the situation. I can't tell you if they were okay, I really don't know. He (it was a he, after all) was removed from the scene by paramedics, without regaining consciousness. And that's it, that's all she wrote. I don't know what happens next. :/

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Teshi
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You went back, and that's what counts.
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mackillian
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You're human. Being human happens, good and bad, and we judge ourselves constantly. We react and we don't react.

We either confront or we flee and try and pretend it never happened.

You went back. You didn't flee and pretend it didn't happened. You went back. The only way to be courageous is to be afraid at the same time and still do whatever needs to be done. You did that.

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TMedina
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And endangering yourself recklessly would make you feel better about yourself as a human being?

Barging blindly into a potentially dangerous situation is highly overrated.

-Trevor

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rivka
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It sounds like the rational part of your brain was fighting with the irrational, floor-germs-will-kill-me, part of your brain. The rational part won, let's not forget.

Knowledge cannot fight the irrational part of your brain. Sometimes, making something a habit can. So if the germ-phobia really bothers you, it may be possible to work through it.

But I don't think that it does, generally, neh? At least, that's the impression I got from your post -- that what bothered you was how you reacted in this situation, and not to germs in general.

So, it seems to me that you are beating yourself up for a reaction that you:
a) overcame
b) have little or no conscious control over
c) many people would have used as an excuse to get out of the situation.

I don't believe that making yourself a better person means that it suddenly becomes easy to do the right thing. Somewhat easier, maybe. But never easy. Rather, it means that you do it even though it is hard.

It was difficult for you, and you did it anyway. Good for you!

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Orson Scott Card
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Welcome to the wonderful world of "primate life."

No matter how lofty we are in our pretensions, we're still just hairless aquatic chimps at heart. The reason it was hard was because, balancing your altruistic impulse (part of tribal life) you had your fear response, which made you hang fire on you decision or action until you could either overcome or give in to your don't-do-this-you-moron instinct.

Everybody has those fear responses; some are rational, some are not. But it can make you hesitate to act - sometimes in circumstances where that hesitation is enough to save your life. which is why that kind of anticipatory, nebulous, unnameable fear has survived in our species - those who have it tend to live longer. Even if their own behavior sometimes puzzles them.

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ElJay
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Bah. Go and be rational all of you, why don't you? [Razz] I've got a good melancholy going here!
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TMedina
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Because Eljay, we like you alive, intact and relatively unharmed.

Call it a quirk.

-Trevor

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fugu13
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*hugs*

I basically agree with what other people have posted. You did a right thing, a very important right thing, despite strong urges otherwise. I know what those urges can feel like, though I'm lucky to be spared the cleaning ones (the others, though . . . you pretty much nailed my feelings).

I long ago stopped expecting people to be anywhere near perfect, though I also have an odd faith in humanity that many cynics lack. Perhaps I have gone through cynicism, out the other side, like Ambrose Bierce.

All I expect is that everyone carries a candle to light his or her way, and that where we can see each other, really notice each other, we help each other along, as you did.

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fugu13
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*sends ElJay hot chocolate and a warm blanket to keep up her melancholic image*
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Kwea
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I have had similar things happen to me, and I was an EMT at the time, I was always suppose to stop if I could.

I don't have the fear of germs you seem to, but that doesn't really matter ( at least to these points, I don't have an answer to the phobia part.... [Big Grin] ).

Lets go to the root of this, IMO....you were worried about your safety after having time to think about it for a while, and you seem to be worried that it might have been some form of unconscious predjuice on your part because they were (or at least appeared to be) homeless.

Here is a clue....you were right to worry....and you were right to go back and check on them as well.

There are plenty of reasons, good reasons, to be fearful of your safety when becoming involved it a situation like this. Not because you are female, although that adds a few other concerns as well, at least for most women, but because the people who find themselves homeless are often desperate. Not every homeless person is dangerous, but a lot of violent crime happens in the street to these people, and a lot of it never gets reported.

Fear is not always a bad thing, often if it what keeps you alive in dangerous situations, what makes you consider facts that might otherwise be ignored.

You overcame your fears, whatever they are, even if you are now scrubbing your hands as you type tonight because of it. You did the right thing, even though you knew there had been violence committed, and it could have possibly been dangerous.

To be honest, I wish you had just called 911, that is why they are there, to deal with these situations. You would have been safer, and yet still have done the right thing. If they had gone out there and it had been nothing, they would have just left...and if there was medical attention needed, it would have been on the way sooner.

Did I mention it would have been safer too? [Razz]

There was a guy who got hit crossing the street at a club I was visiting near my house, where my best friend was a DJ. I was home from the Army, newly certified (although not in MA, where this happened) as an EMT Basic medic. I heard there had been an accident, and that the police had been notified, but since I had been drinking, and wasn't certified in MA, I just said "I hope they will be OK."....then someone told me that he had been walking...I had thought it was just a fender bender in cars, but he was struck on foot crossing to the club.

I took off at a full run, and by the time I got there it was obvious that he had been creamed. The back of his head was fractured, but he wasn't breathing so I flipped him over, using my arms as a neck brace, because if he wasn't breathing then stabilizing his neck wouldn't matter. As soon as I flipped him, he began breathing on his own though, so I didn't do mouth to mouth.

I monitored him, and stabilized his neck, and waited for the EMT's to get there.

Once it was all done, I got up....and noticed I was covered in his blood, to the point that I couldn't wear anything I had on. He died three days later, because his brain was mush....the accident had smashed his skull to pieces, and nothing anyone could have done would have helped him at all.

I reacted, and then dealt with the repercussions once the rush wore off. I don't regret the fact I helped as best I could, but I was still afraid of getting a blood borne illness, so I got all sorts of tests done. (all good, thank God)

Sounds sort of what you are going through, second guessing yourself even though you did the right thing. I had the shakes for about an hour, off and on, and while I knew I had done my best, and everyone who saw me in action came over and said they were impressed, I could only focus on the fact that I should have reacted sooner, or done better/more.

I did the best I could, under the circumstances, and from teh sound of this you did too. You should not be upset, you should be glad that you helped at all, despite your fears.

[Group Hug] [Hat]

[ April 28, 2005, 11:52 PM: Message edited by: Kwea ]

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ElJay
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Kwea, I don't have a cell phone. If I had, I probably would have just called 911.
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Kwea
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Even just driving to the closest phine would be fine, that is the optimal option.....

Still, my main point was that no matter how hard it seemed to you, at least you cared enough to do what you felt was right.

Also, a lot of your fears...other than the germy ones, perhaps....were spot on regarding the situation you were in. There WAS a risk to yourself, and it could ahve been a dangerous situation.

Don't ignore those fears just because you don't like being afraid...those fears may save your life sometime.

[ April 29, 2005, 12:10 AM: Message edited by: Kwea ]

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whiskysunrise
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ElJay, I thought you were a good person before I read this. Now I think you are even better. [Hat]
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quidscribis
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Eljay, I hear ya.

And I have nothing more to say than that.

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Nato
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Last fall riding home on my bike late at night I saw a car full of (presumably drunken) college students slow down next to a parked car while the guy in the passenger seat reached out with a club or something and broke the driver's-side window of the parked car. I thought about riding after them for the second or two down a sidestreet that I'd need in order to see their licence plate number, but I was got worried they'd beat me up or something, so I hesitated and lost the chance to do it. When I went to find the owner of the car, I couldn't really do anything for him other than tell him what happened.

Sometimes you don't react in the very best way to a situation, and sometimes you have thoughts that you're not proud of, but you can still be a good person.

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Storm Saxon
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Eljay, as someone said upthread, the fact is that you did return and help that guy. [Smile] Wanting to protect your own self is only natural and right.

Having been in situations similiar to yours before, what strikes me about your post is that you didn't get angry at those around you who weren't stopping to help that guy. Me, that's what I do. I get really angry that the burden of doing ethical crap falls on *my* shoulders when there are people right there who could be helping. Ooooh, it makes me angry just thinking about it.

Don't be upset with yourself that you aren't ethical enough. You're plenty moral. Be angry at the wicked world that imposes such a burden on you.

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Jonathan Howard
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You did the right move. You know, in your heart, that even though those setbacks exist, you did the right move.

I would probably have been to cowardly to act, and sfter seeing someone beaten up I might have alerted the police and probably fled. Now, though, I know what I really should do. ElJay - you opened my eyes; at least you know that your post changed my way of action in the future, and may we never have these situations again (Jewish superstition, but still).

JH

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punwit
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Fighting through selfish emotions to help someone in need is the best part of humanity. If you didn't have those self-interests you wouldn't be human and your act wouldn't have been as admirable. Who would you admire more, a millionaire that donates 10,000 dollars or a blue-collar worker that donates the same amount? Not only does your story confirm that you are a perfect example of a Good Samaritan, the fact that you are introspective concerning your motivation/fears indicates that you are willing to grow and change to become even better. Have faith Liza, you aren't perfect but you're striving to be so
and, personally, I think you're closer than most.

[Hail]

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ElJay
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I appreciate all the validation. However... I'm pretty okay with the fact that I'm mostly a good person at heart, however much I might try to deny it publically sometimes.

The reason I left out the end of the story is that it becomes somewhat less clear cut, and I didn't want this to just turn into a validation thread, telling me I had done the right thing regardless of how it turned out. I'm pretty sure I did, eventually, do the right thing.

It's that eventually that gets me.

You're right, rivka, that the phobias don't normally bother me all that much. They're manageable, for the most part... I have a few others I didn't mention, too, that fall more towards obsessive, and when I feel they are starting to get the upper hand I beat them down into submission. As long as I can still do that, I feel okay about it.

But this time it feels like they really did affect my life negatively. For those talking about the safety issue -- yes, I agree it was a valid concern, however I evaluated and dealt with the valid part of it on the first pass. It was broad daylight, on a busy road (although I was the only one in position to see that the guy had actually been pushed down, and wasn't just passed out) and there were other pedestrians within easy ear-shot... about a block away. I know that once I got to him the situation would become somewhat unpredictable, but I was relatively sure my person wasn't in an unacceptable risk of physical danger.

It's the time between when I made that assesment and when I actually stopped that bugs me. It bothers me that I had to actually mentally force myself to attempt to approach and touch a stranger in need.

I don't want to lose my caution, or my (healthy) sense of fear for potentially dangerous situations. But I think it might be time to work on the other stuff a little. This was just too much.

(And thanks for the hot chocolate, fugu. [Wink] )

[ April 29, 2005, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: ElJay ]

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Kwea
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I would consider looking into getting help for those things if you feel they are getiing out of hand. It is almost impossible to "cure" yourself of those type of things alone, and trying to do so may just cause even more pain for yourself.

If you feel that these behaviors are adversly affecting you, interfering with the way you wnat to live your life, then this might help you get the help you need to lick this.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Kwea

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TMedina
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Well, I don't think its a matter of being "cured" but sit down and make a list of what fears you had and why.

See if these are rational or irrational.

For rational fears, see if there is anything you could or even should do.

For irrational fears, think about talking to a professional.

-Trevor

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ElJay
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Professional help. Yeah. That would be what I want to avoid at all costs. [Smile]

Anyone have any experience with getting professional help for OCD tendencies that they would be willing to share?

The germ thing is funny, because in so many ways I am so not squeamish. In the tootsie roll example that was given in another thread, I would have happily eaten the tootsie roll, without even blinking. If something falls on the ground on grass or carpeting I'll pick it up, look at it, maybe blow it off if there's visible lint and eat it. It's just certain circumstances that give me the heebie-jeebies.

I wish dkw was around, I think she did a behavior self-modification experiment when she was in some class at seminary. I wonder how it turned out, and what resources she used...

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twinky
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A lot of people on this forum say that they have obsessive-compulsive disorder to varying degrees, and it seems to be taken for granted that it's a trait that is more common among people who post here than it is in the general population. I think I've heard people draw a link between that and Xenocide before, because if I'm not mistaken OSC was praised for his portrayal of OCD in the book. So whenever someone says "I have mild OCD" everyone nods understandingly and is sympathetic, and if someone says "I worry needlessly about X" or "I am overly paranoid about Y," respondents might mention OCD as a possible cause.

Not saying you don't have it. Saying that's not what's important.

quote:
How can I live with my stupid, white, middle-class, privileged self if I can't stop and check on someone I saw knocked down on the side of the road.
This, to me, is the issue. The OCD is part of it, but if I'm reading what you're saying correctly the important thing is that you had to guilt yourself into stopping. The precise cause(s) of the fear of stopping (e.g. OCD) are secondary to the fact that you feel like it took guilt (fear of being, or being seen as, a bad person) to overcome the fear of stopping.

I'm going to stop writing the prase "if I'm reading what you're saying correctly" from this point on, but please remember that it's assumed in everything I write, okay? Okay. If I've misinterpreted you then just disregard this post.

I think your desired mental process would have had a similar result (keeping in mind that the result isn't what matters to you) but would have gone something like "I'm afraid to stop but I'm going to anyway because I'm a good person" rather than "I'm afraid to stop but I'm going to anyway because I'm more afraid of being a bad person," or even worse, "I'm more afraid of being seen as a bad person [when I post about this on Hatrack]." That, it seems to me, is why you feel bad. Compounding it is the fact that you were in a rough/wrong side of tracks/lower-class area as a "white, middle-class, privileged" person. If you're one of those people who has asked herself more than once why she has never done volunteer work in, say, Africa... well, what you experienced last night is a similar (but much more direct) version of the same thing.

(I mention Africa because that's one of my guilt-trip scenarios. I have the life a lot of people want and sometimes I feel like I ought to be working with Engineers Without Borders rather than being in private industry, but I'm too secure in my first-world comforts to actually go through with it.)

As "white, middle-class, privileged" people, you and I do not often interact with the sorts of people who travel in packs and beat others up on the street (so "not often," in fact, that I don't even know if I'm overgeneralizing by assuming that there's a "sort" of person who'd do that). Like Sherman in The Bonfire of the Vanities, we drive through their turf in our nice cars (or trucks) and don't stop for reasons other than traffic signals or gas. Sherman doesn't stop even when his car collides with one of them. Further, crisis situations like the one you encountered jolt us out of our comfortable day-to-day lives. Once I was out with a girl (passing through Queen's Park, actually, which we walked by en masse at the gathering last weekend) and a man who claimed to be a homeless immigrant came up to us and asked us to help him. I gave him some subway tokens (didn't have any change) and after some further discussion gave him enough cash to buy a sleeping bag, which he promised to do after thanking me profusely. Obviously I'll never know if he was telling the truth. I've never done anything like that before -- I do sometimes give change or subway tokens (depending on which I have) to homeless people, but never "real" money. Afterward I couldn't help wondering if I'd just done it because I thought subconsciously that it would impress the girl (it did). I'd like to think that's not the case, but I can't say for certain. I will say that I have never felt good about it, although I do hope that he bought the sleeping bag and used it to keep warm. I don't feel bad about it, just ambivalent.

What I think I'm getting at (hey, I never said that I'd be entirely certain of my own point) is that feeling this way about these sorts of things comes with the "white, middle-class, privileged" territory and does not in and of itself make you a bad person. In a way it's heartening that you're aware of it even though I'm not sure there's anything you can actually do about it.

Do I make any sense?

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rivka
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quote:
and may we never have these situations again (Jewish superstition, but still)
Jonathan, it's not a superstition. It's meant to be a prayer.

Please, please, please KNOCK OFF the repeated slams at traditional Judaism, would you? You have the freedom to believe whatever you like, and I think that is a wonderful thing. But some consideration for what others believe would be nice.

You also have the freedom to post whatever you like -- within board guidelines. And you're skating awfully close to them, often. Pop has enough to do (not that I'm implying that this particular instance would warrant his intervention; it certainly would not).

Think before you post -- try the Preview Post button, perhaps? Thanks.

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ElJay
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quote:
but if I'm reading what you're saying correctly the important thing is that you had to guilt yourself into stopping.

...

I think your desired mental process would have had a similar result (keeping in mind that the result isn't what matters to you)

Aaaaaand twink nails it.

No solution for me though, huh? Oh well. Wanna run away to Africa with me to build irrigation systems or something and salve our middle class guilt? I promise not to count out loud while shoveling.

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ElJay
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quote:
"I'm afraid to stop but I'm going to anyway because I'm a good person" rather than "I'm afraid to stop but I'm going to anyway because I'm more afraid of being a bad person," or even worse, "I'm more afraid of being seen as a bad person [when I post about this on Hatrack]."
Although if I was gonna nitpick I'd substitute "because it's the right thing to do" for "because I'm a good person" in that sentence. In my mind, it was clearly the right thing to do. But I don't think that's why I stopped. Or, at least, that knowledge on it's own was not -enough- to make me stop.
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twinky
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I actually opened up an edit window to change it in exactly that way, but couldn't come up with a suitable way to label my edit. Also, I wasn't sure if anyone had already read it.

I don't know much about agricultural water distribution systems, but I bet we could design a passable one and then build it. It's a date.

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Primal Curve
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I'll call fugu's hot chocolate and raise you some hand sanitizer. [Razz]
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ElJay
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Edit: To twink

You're the engineer, you get to design it. I'm unskilled labor. [Smile]

Primal Curve: I don't use hand sanitizer, it breeds antibiotic resistant bacteria strains. But I appreciate the thought. [Smile]

[ April 29, 2005, 11:46 AM: Message edited by: ElJay ]

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twinky
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[Smile]

I'll help with the shoveling, too. Since we won't have union-management restrictions, I'll be allowed to participate directly in both the design and the construction.

Also, what about hand sanitizer that uses isopropanol? That stuff works pretty well without helping bacteria become resistant. (Edit: That's what they use in hospitals here, and mum keeps bottles of it around the house.)

[ April 29, 2005, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: twinky ]

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TMedina
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Guilt does wonders for making us do the right thing since we're not nearly as perfect or ideal as we might like to be.

As long as we continue to deal with emotional reactions, we might well rely on another emotional impulse to motivate an entirely different behavior.

-Trevor

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twinky
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I thought of something I want to clarify. One of the reasons I don't think there's much you can actively do about it is that these sorts of crisis situations don't come up very often. When a guy posts a "I like this girl but I can't ask her out" thread, the solution is fairly obvious: work on your confidence, learn by doing, et cetera. You don't have that option.

I have a question, too. When you saw it, did you want to help her? It seems to me like you did, and that's important.

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mothertree
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quote:
Anyone have any experience with getting professional help for OCD tendencies that they would be willing to share?

I learned I had OCD when I was 7 months pregnant this last time and I weighed in at the doctor having lost 6 pounds since the last month. They said I had to come back next week and if I hadn't gained some weight they would put me on bedrest. I had been on a healthy eating forum ("diet" was a dirty word there) and the forum leader confronted me about having anorexia, which freaked me out (I think it was a bad move on her part, but that's bygones) That's when I started hanging out at hatrack instead. Anyway, one of my husband's clients was married to a psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders so I went to see her and she found that I had repressed depression, Anxiety disorder, and OCD.

The repressed depression was a shocker, I struggled with depression earlier in life but felt I was over it. So apparently I could be depressed and not feel it, which didn't make any damned sense, but oh well. She wanted me to get on SSRIs right away which my OB happily prescribed, but after doing some reading on rxlist.com I decided that starting SSRIs during the third trimester was a bad idea (Paxil, for instance, appears to cause low birth weight and fetal death in rats specifically when started during the third trimester).

So I just continued going to therapy for the rest of the pregnancy. I seemed to suffer a lot from not expressing anger, not feeling like I could express anger, and not permitting myself to feel anger against the baby after it was born. The therapist was trying to work with me on that, when I stopped going. It was self-pay and she kept going on vacation anyhow. I think its pretty normal for women to have trouble processing anger, though I don't know if that is the particular case with you. I'm sure a lot of men have the same trouble, but it seems to be almost a given with women.

The social structures we as humans live in have a lot to do with our seratonin levels (if studies of primates are any indication). The seratonin levels also seem to correlate with the OCD and depression symptoms (which is why SSRIs are used to treat them). Alpha males have the most seratonin in a monkey troupe, if you take out the alpha monkey, some other monkey will rise to the alpha position and that monkey's seratonin will be measurably higher than it used to be. Assuming that monkeys who get regular blood draws and live in labs are a reflection of reality [Razz] Low status monkeys under stress pick at their skin, develop tics, and engage in other behaviors that could be analogous to OCD. I think this is stuff I read in Listening to Prozac long about 12 years or so ago. Though it may be from Learned Optimism which I also read around that time frame.

The Learned Helplessness/Optimism concept is that cognitive processing of events, particularly misfortunes, underlies our attitude (I am working from an assumption here that OCD and depression are closely linked, at least in terms of biochemical matters). Well, it goes on...

More of my pseudo-science thoughts

[ April 29, 2005, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]

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TheTick
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*hugs*

quote:
did you want to help her? It seems to me like you did, and that's important.
I agree with my esteemed colleague. I don't have much to add, and I hope it doesn't deflate your melancholy too much. [Wink]
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ElJay
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[Smile]

Eh, I'm pretty much over the melancholy anyway.

Mothertree, thank you. I don't really have a problem expressing anger, for the most part, although I sometimes have a problem expressing it productively. [Big Grin] But still, it helps to hear about your experience.

twink & Tick: Yes, I wanted to help. I also wanted to kick the kids' respective asses, although I knew that part wasn't a good idea/productive. [Wink] Seeing violence done to another person, particularly someone just minding their own business, brought out an immediate, strong protective reaction. Plus I hate bullies.

As far as working on it... no, crisis situations don't come up very often, but I think there are things I could do to get over/reduce the reaction that delayed my stopping. For instance, I could volunteer in a soup kitchen, which apart from being a good idea anyway would allow me to aclimatize myself to being in what for me is a less-than-comfortable situation in a controlled setting. Start small, work my way up. Then if/when another crisis situation of this sort did occur, I'd be better prepared for it.

But that's really tangental. I'm not so much concerned about being able to face this specific situation again as being able to face the same sort of issue in general. Although volunteering may actually affect both. *shrug*

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twinky
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If the soup kitchen thing doesn't work out, I'm still willing to run off to Africa with you.
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ElJay
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Okay. Start reading up on agricultural water distribution systems, and I'll keep you posted. [Smile]

Although I'm not stuck on that particular project. If desalination or solar ovens or something works better for you, I'm not picky.

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twinky
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Actually, I'd really like to design an efficient drinking water distribution system, but unfortunately there's a Canadian company that has already one-upped me by designing a compact purification system. One of my friends work for them. I applied, but they didn't want to interview me (presumably because of my aforementioned lack of specialization and experience in this area).

Obviously I need to go back to school.

Actually, in all seriousness... this was something I started thinking about after my on-site safety training here. I posted about it sort of tangentially by starting a thread about occupational health and safety. When I was in university I wasn't interested in the environmental stuff, automated process control was just so much cooler. But that doesn't mean I'm not qualified to work for an environmental firm, it's not like I'm doing controls work now anyway. I could try to land a job with a company that designs equipment to clean up the messes that most of my industry makes. That would be a suitable goal to work toward.

Edit: Um, not that any of this is at all related to what you wanted to talk about. Sorry. [Blushing]

[ April 29, 2005, 01:31 PM: Message edited by: twinky ]

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ElJay
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It would be indeed.

And while I'm not prepared to give up first world comforts full-time to go dig ditches anytime soon, I am at least partially serious about trying to go on a work project of some sort to a third world country sometime in the next few years. My thing is I would not, at the moment, want it to be one affiliated with a religious organization, and I would rather work on an infrastructure project than do something like build houses.

I apparently have some research to do. I'm sure there is an appropriate program or ten in place.

Edit: No problem. Thread drift, ya know. Besides, we've pretty much covered my original topic.

[ April 29, 2005, 01:39 PM: Message edited by: ElJay ]

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romanylass
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I just wanted to chime in, Eljay, and say I admire that you are facing this and that you did go back to help. You are a better person than most.
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ElJay
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Thank you.

[Smile]

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punwit
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Eljay, my comments weren't intended as merely validating your actions. I was attempting to highlight the idea that all of us have to deal with our fears, be they rational or not, in our daily lives. Even the most noble and self-sacrificing of individuals can be presented with situations that strain their ability to act promptly. I maintain that you are significantly above the norm and your desire to negate or offset those irrational fears is the proof in the pudding. It is also true that the harder your internal stuggle, the more admirable your actions become. I can offer no advice in your struggle to control those feelings but I offer my most positive good will in support of your effort.
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Bob_Scopatz
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ElJay...get a cell phone!
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Kwea
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None of us can edit what we think, but what we can control is what we do.

You acted properly, adn thanks to that you should feel a little less guilty and a little more confident about your actions.

I would also recommend that you seek some sort of professional help regarding your OCD tendancies, it might really help about the way you feel on those issues.

Kwea

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ElJay
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Kwea, with all due respect, I think you're getting a very out-of-balance idea of my OCD issues based on this thread. Yes, I have them, yes, sometimes they're somewhat bothersome. But this is the only time in memory that they've actually adversely affected my life, and I control them well enough that none of my friends or family have ever noticed -anything- unless I've specifically pointed it out to them.

For the most part I think they are a part of who I am, and I have no real desire to get rid of them. They bother me at the moment because they delayed me doing something I knew was the right thing to do. I wouldn't mind wearing the edges away a little so in a similar situation in the future I wouldn't have as big a problem. But professional help? I don't think so.

Bob: No. I hate cell phones, and have less than zero desire to carry one around with me.

punwit: Thanks. [Smile]

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