How to change my experience of my 5 year old

4/15/07

Feeling irritation this morning. I feel uneasy about how this fits in with this ‘new’ processing, or new way of being. Because I still feel exquisitely irritated by Scott, his chattering, his being in the way, his repeating the same things over and over again. I’m distressed by my way of non-responding to him which is basically to give him what I thinks he wants, without enthusiasm in hopes that he’ll go away and quit bugging me. The interruptions, and then mini-meltdowns when I tell him he has to wait his turn. It’s just his 5 year old kidness that gets to me. He’s more of a whack-a-mole type of kidness than Connor was, where you respond to one aspect of irritating kidness and it pops up in another. Almost immediately. It makes me feel wild, and then I worry about what effect that my attitude toward him has on him. I perceive him as a pest, and I’m afraid it shows. So how can I create a ‘different experience’, a more pleasurable experience. Now Gary’s needling me about the condition of the refrigerator and I’m reacting to the digs. So I can feel unpleasant emotions engage,

I’ve been reducing the celexa, and I wonder if maybe that has something to do with my increase in irritability. Because it’s been harder these last couple days, especially with Scott, to not identify tightly with my reactions; harder to find the space between Me and my reactions, and stay there.

Dream:

Some sort of hitch hiking dream. I don’t know if the boys were with me or not; sometimes I had a sense as if they were there—the ‘signature’ context of them, but I’m not sure if I actually “saw” them. The couple who picked us up were very religious. It was a cream-colored large car, like a cadillac or buick. I think I was in the back seat with the woman, and someone like my sister or maybe my cousin Janet were with me. This woman had that kind of evangelical glow about her, like a couple did that I met when treating a lady they were caring for. This couple kept talking to me about how they had “saved” various people. This woman was sort of like that. We arrived at their ‘church’. It was an odd service, with lots of young people dancing, but I had the feeling it wasn’t really in the fervent religious spirit these older people had. Then there’s stuff about needing to go to the bathroom and then Scott was with me, and I wanted him to go into the women’s room and had some repulsion that he’d gone into the men’s. Then I’m wanting him to wash his hands. I’m leaving with some friends, Rebecca and her 4 children among them. I invite them over and she says no thanks. As we part I call back something to tease her and she doesn’t laugh. By way of an explanation I tell the people I’m with that I don’t blame her for not laughing; she must be really exhausted with 4 kids.

Later—did some tribute work-vacuumed, cleaned out the refrigerator at Gary’s needled request. He took Scott with him to Connor’s practice, so I have some peace here.

I wonder at my impatience with Scott. I wonder how much hands-on attention he’d need to stay out of trouble. It occurs to me that what’s true is that I haven’t been willing to do what it takes to keep him out of trouble. If I’m conversing with him, or letting him ‘help’ me in the kitchen, at least he’s not going and writing on the walls or getting into Gary’s tools, or any of the other things I keep stopping him at. I think he needs FAR more than I’ve been willing to give. He needs to be nearly continuously engaged, or he goes and gets into something he shouldn’t. I suppose the behavior I’m seeing is a result of my having chosen to not engage him at that level. Again I see my pattern of wanting to be left alone and not being bothered with 5 year old things. I am just going to have to include him more. I have a feeling he may feel less of an impulse to bait Connor if I engaged him more than as just a pest. So here’s a place where I need to be aware of a decision on a deeper level. I’ve been responding to Scott as a pest. This morning as I sat in the chair Scott wanted to come sit with me. He’d already been bugging me in the kitchen, getting in the way, talking when I’m trying to talk to Gary or hear something on the radio. I was thinking to myself about the experience of him and wondering how I could experience this positively. I realize, it’s normal to be irritated with irritating behavior. I’m not trying to change the experience of irritation, but I need to change the preconditions that give rise to the irritating behavior. That will change my “experience” of Scott’s behavior.

OK, so then what about my ‘experience’ of reluctance to cut short something I’m interested in in order to give him the presence he needs. Well, let’s see, that experience would change if I changed it’s preconditions. Which is a belief I have that it’s important for me to catch every nuance on the news so I understand the subtleties of a situation. And part of that is driven by the desire to prove myself to my dad. To have the knowledge I’d need to out-argue him. Interesting that feeling of intensity of competitiveness. Even to this day when it’s not important to me to change his world view I still want to ‘best’ him when we talk about these things. I feel competitive enough that it makes me anxious if I miss something on the news, so anything that causes me to miss something on the news aggravates me.

I think, “it doesn’t matter. I can check it later.” Then a voice says, “But I might forget, or not have the same interest later as I do now.” And the voice would say, “Then it wasn’t that important.” And that brings me to the place of who prevails. There’s a part of me that when it wants something, it wants it NOW, and the idea that in the future I might not want it dishonors this person in the past who DID. I feel like I’m abandoning that part, leaving her behind. The part of me that’s hungry for a piece of information, and has a hole shaped for that information, and it’s never filled, eventually overlooked if not tended to immediately, and in a way will eternally remain empty. Eternal suffering, even if the larger organism feels full or full-ish. OK, so resenting Scott’s interruptions and figuring out how to change that experience of Scott to a more enjoyable one brings me to the decisions that maintain his behavior—mine, that is—and then where they come from—first a competitiveness, then an anxiety, then a part that doesn’t want that anxious part overlooked and abandoned. And feels that moving on from a want-generated-anxiety is leaving something behind to die. Isn’t that weird—I’ve just never looked at it this closely before. A ‘solution’ comes to miind, which is to remember and come back to it later, but that generates anxiety that maybe I won’t remember to do that. Or adding it to my list makes my list longer and I feel anxious about having something else to remember. So it seems to start with anxiety.

I think my father and I may be symbols to each other of what seems like a split that is very old: liberalism vs conservatism. I think that Bill O’Reilly has cast himself as the champion of conservative and traditional middle American values, and liberalism is the windmill he’s tilting at. Not really an unbiased remark. Each side says, “I know I’m right” and feels that if it’s opponent is beaten in a war of words, then it wins. For a lot of my life I was afraid my father was right. That the orientation and context framework that he comes from, in which a profession of belief in God along with church-going as part of the trappings, and patriotism being a large part, that that orientation is objectively “right” and moving away from it is “wrong”. My dad could beat me in an argument every time. So that’s why I want to inform myself.

Do I really need to defend myself? Probably not, but what about the part of me that thinks it does? It needs to be completely satisfied before I move away from self-defence, competitiveness.

I think I’ll just sit with that for a while and continue a little transcribing.

~ by kaleidoscoperefractions on June 6, 2009.