For the first half of the day, I was deep in the world of DBT Distress Tolerance skills training and Case Study crafting. For the most part I am adoring my mental health clinician training, but a lot of the time it's more than draining because my brain is fighting to disseminate what is actual education and what is societal indoctrination.
The struggle is real.
Another factor is that I am dealing with real people and their pain, which is also a challenge as I too am a real person with real pain. In fact, the last two months have been more chock full of pain that a Gom Jabbar in the hands of a Reverend Mother (Big bonus points to whomever gets that reference;)
Anyway, this morning during my DBT Group Skills Team Meeting I had an insight that highlighted an awareness that has been brewing in my mind for quite some time.
The growing divide between men and women is just so dang sad.
As my group members, who are all women, and I worked together discussing how we learned and utilized our crisis distress tolerance skills this week, another theme emerged and I listened with my mouth slightly ajar of story after story of inappropriate behavior of men towards the women in my group. I listened to expressions of all out dislike and hatred towards an entire sex, and to be quite honest, I had to do a lot of distress tolerance thinking in the moment because I grew up with men, lots of them, and they didn't all deserve to be painted with that broad brush.
I've been married for almost 26 years, so I will fully and freely admit I am an outlier in the conversation of dating and relationships, and from what I have heard in my listening to all manner of people, it's kinda a nightmare out there. Apparently women are skewing left ideologically and men are skewing right. According to women, including some I listened to today, men just want to be coddled and take things from women, and according to men, woman just want things and treat men like machines and crap in general. There's a lot more there, but I am going to keep it brief.
What struck me the most in the meeting was the generalizing based on one's experience and how a person viewed all people in a group based on that experience. It's really hard to listen and glean someone's perspective if you come into any sort of interaction with your view already colored by past experiences, so in the context of building distress tolerance via practicing mindfulness and other skills, a disadvantage is there at the get go.
The women in my group, and some of them are quite young, made statements that they were swearing off dating and men all together, and I have heard many men state similar things. Actually, I find it incredibly interesting that both sexes are saying the same things just with different words and from sex-based differences points of view.
It makes me think that my comment about Sunday school teaching social skills may not have been far off the mark. Have we really decayed culturally in the West so far that men and women don't even know or have a desire to interact with each other any more because everything has become so transactional? I don't have any answers, but I am truly saddened the state of things, coming together in a relationship built out of unconditional positive mutual regard and filling in the gaps for each other as you build and grow a life together is a magnificent thing. You can also have relationships like that as single people within a community. Where that kind of awesomeness can't exist is in this divisive minefield of the religion of Self that so many people are ambling through.
Talk about distressing.
But, I have been in a bit of a ruminative trough for long enough, after today I will crawl out of this thought mire and return to more pleasant things such as Pi Day festivities, homesteading activities, and yes, I am once more going on an adventure this next week, so stay tuned!
*And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's never ever ever pensive about anything iPhone.*
