Many people have difficulty tolerating ambiguity. This may be just why our nation is so polarized right now between the left and the right, Trump haters and Trump supporters.
Actually, ambiguity is often the state of knowledge. We just can’t get a clear picture of how things are and just when we do, we find out something new. Young twenty-somes often do not feel comfortable with ambiguity and this is the reason why many of them are seduced into cults which claim that they have all the answers like Scientology.
I am satisfied that I don’t know all the answers and that some answers will never be extremely clear although they may become clearer over time. I believe that I don’t know all the answers and that I won’t know all the answers in this lifetime. People who do not believe this way makes me very nervous as I don’t totally agree with everybody and everybody doesn’t agree totally with me.
College was the place where my fellow students were encouraged to disagree and to debate many points of view unlike most of the students of today who are reinforced for accepting the beliefs of certain professors who are deemed politically correct.
Gaining in knowledge should encourage surprises and new
ideas not consistently reinforce all beliefs presented or taught. Science should constantly explore and evaluate conclusions made from current experiments and past knowledge. Many scientists often currently skip the phase where they develop a naturalistic understanding of the area of knowledge that they choose to evaluate. This often involves acquiring personal experience which has been typical of anthropologists in the past who went out to live among a people that they proposed to study. First-hand experience can sometimes be better than book-learning.
How many child psychologists have ever had first-hand experience bringing up children? or have spent time playing with them after they themselves have entered high school or college? Getting down on the floor and participating in a child’s imaginary world is often different from observing and taking measurements from an experimental psychologist’s perspective. I especially like to have the child have me draw a picture of an experience he or she has had. Also, suits and ties and tight skirts and high heels get in the way of making these observations.
I once was a participant in setting up an experiment about snake phobia. I was not
particularly worried as I didn’t think actual snakes would be used even though I was snake phobic and didn’t tell people because they then would surprise me with one of the real snakes used in their experiments. I knew that when I saw someone carrying a shoe box in the rooms where my fellow students had study carrels there usually was a snake in it and I would leave the room without saying anything.
After I was strapped into a recliner with leads for physiological responses in a room with no windows and the only door behind me, and shown slide pictures of snakes, I was told this was when the actual snake would be brought in a glass aquarium from behind me. If this had happened, I (or any real snake phobic) would have gone “ape-shit” and that would have been the end of the experiment and the start of a lawsuit if I and/or they had survived.
No one knows everything and we never will. We just have to live with ambiguity in our lives. Concrete knowledge is desired and claimed by some, but can not usually be true in actual reality.
Another supposedly concrete example of ambiguity is the spectrum of colors. The is no such thing usually as a pure color and the changing fashions in fashion design and interior decorating illustrate this. For example, a color of green that is fashionable in yarn for crocheting and knitting goes out of style and it goes on sale. Someone making items from this yarn for sale at craft fairs might not get many buyers. This color of green no longer is fashionable. Or pick up an old or vintage handmade throw at a flea market and it might not go with the things you currently have where you plan to use it. Did you know that the color green or other primary colors can be ambiguous?
I wanted to think that men and women are potentially alike; but as I got older and wiser, I don’t think that way anymore. After many, many years of marriage. I have learned different.
For example, when I want to ask a man a quick question while he is watching TV or on the phone, I am told to wait a minute which never comes. If I am doing something, a man expects that I should interrupt what I am doing tell him the information that he wants to know which usually also involves that I stop what I am doing and do it for him. However, I am expected to multitask and to not forget what I was doing or going to do to take care of something for him.
Another example, men have goals and aspirations that can take a good part of their time and of their disposable? income. Or else they think to themselves, what else am I working for? Women work to contribute to the family income and also to pay the childcare costs so they can work to do this. Certain hobbies and their accompanying expenses are considered necessary “man” things to do. Women like to look nice and to have a nice place to live which is not as important to men.
Women risk their lives and their health in order to reproduce while men usually think it is no big deal. Even if a woman chooses not to reproduce, it is still her responsibility. Also often there are men who like to have unprotected sex and who often do not see reproduction as their responsibility. Birth control and a woman’s menstrual cycle usually are two things women have to take care of and suffer from. Men often think that these are things a man does not have to be concerned about.
Also having children can create a great big stress on a woman’s body and under certain circumstances can kill a woman. Any woman who has been pregnant more than once including stillbirths and miscarriages, as well as live births, can tell you that they can all be different. Even I who had three children late in life seemingly uneventfully can tell that you that I could have lost my third child during birth and I didn’t know this til after she was born.
Some women don’t want to bother with being pregnant but still have to deal with mixed feelings about having an abortion and the often dangerous lack of skilled care at abortion clinics. On the man’s side is the possibility that when an abortion is involved, he may still want the child if the woman doesn’t!
Sometimes I think that some men can become so attached to their ideas and accomplishments that they can’t accept the idea that their ideas may no longer work with new discoveries being found and can stand in the way of necessary progress. Academia reinforces this with its publish or perish mandates necessary to obtain tenure. Women are more flexible and more able to see different points of view. Relationships for women are more important for women and often make up for the fact that they are less attached to a job or position or a theory.
Who are you? Everyone is different from birth. Lots of things that happen to us can change our perception of ourself. People around us expect us to be like them and as a child, we often don’t know any better. We all have different kinds of potential and that potential helps define our purpose in life. We often are so busy responding to the demands put on us by the outside, we have little time or opportunity to discover who we really are inside. Often we are caught up in doing what we think we should be doing but not really what reflects our purpose in life and uses our unique talents and abilities. Sometimes this is reflected an adolescent rebellion or in a midlife crisis and others don’t discover this until they are facing retirement.
Have you ever been told to change your attitude about something? For example, whether it is about “stay at home moms”, “homeschooling” or any subject up for discussion?
Have you ever thought about it this way? Which comes first in this process, changing your attitude or changing your perspective? Have you ever changed your attitude after you have changed your perspective? or vice versa?
Becoming unsatisfied with the available public schools, might lead to you changing your mind about the appropriateness of homeschooling for your family.
Debate teams prepare to be able to defend both sides of a disputed issue and this prepares them to see the points of view or perspectives of both sides. Lawyers often participate in debating in order to help them to be able to take both sides of a disputed issue such as “guilty” or “innocent” in court.
We often jump to conclusions and staunchly take one side in an upcoming vote in our government. Who do we prize? People who can change their minds when necessary and alter their perspective to do this or people who stick to “their guns” no matter what?
Gaining knowledge is a process of gathering information and evaluating the appropriateness of it as well as altering theories when necessary to fit new information.
Think of how science has changed when it comes to considering what matter and energy are made of. Initially, it was atoms, neutrons, and protons. Then it was found that matter and energy were interchangeable. Now we focus upon waves of energy as the foundation of matter.
Yes, being too flexible can be inappropriate at times. For example, you go to a car show where different car dealers are offering their latest models for sale and as you go from booth to booth or exhibit after exhibit, you find yourself constantly persuaded that the latest car offered is the best.
It may be that from one perspective, i.e. cost, one vehicle is the best; but from the perspective of safety, another car is the best. Or the vehicle that might attract the younger crowd appeals to the man or woman in a mid-life crisis.
No, once chosen the profession of a psychotherapist or counselor requires continuing growth. Sometimes in surprising ways.
Freudian psychotherapists have raised the subject of transference in the relationship between a therapist and a client. Transference can go both ways. Something about the client makes them see the therapist in a certain way. Sometimes something about the therapist makes them see the client in a certain way.
Education in a profession such as psychotherapy can lead the practitioner to believe they must present themselves as experts in the field and as not vulnerable to the types of things that bring ordinary clients into therapy. This can lead to rationalization and denial on the therapists part.
Rationalization means that the therapst can create a good explanation as to why he or she is not vulnerable to the types of problems his or her patients have. Denial can also result from the taking of this position and it can cause therapy to not move forward for the client.
Personal growth is one way possibly to help stop this from happening. Does the development of one’s self-concept and concept of life stop with attaining one’s maturity whether at 18, 21, or 35? No, it does not. Our perspective on life constantly changes with new experiences.
Honestly does a psychotherapist think that they can understand exactly how they learned to be who they think they are and stop growing. Wouldn’t personal growth experiences for psychotherapists help with this?
Is there only one answer? Hasn’t science found this out. What things did scientists believe were true when your parents were children and what have you or your children learned in the present that scientists’ did not know or believe then?
Remember the old saying, “Do as I say!” not “Do as I do!”
Also the more defensive barbed wire a therapist puts between him or herself and what he or she is asking their patient to do, the more “phony” and indefensible they become as therapists.
New learning and new growth leads to enthusiasm to carry this over into the psychotherapist’s work. Insights developed this way can help a therapist be more responsive in therapy. I now hear and see more things than I used to see or hear in everyday interpersonal interaction.
For example I can still learn from a four year old that grandma is not always smiling and looking happy when she thinks she is especially when I am feeling that I am working at something and forgeting to enjoy doing it.
Women, men? Does the need for security control your life? Are you afraid to fight with someone because it might end your relationship with them? Women, people who put you down, often the man in your life, often win a potential conflict with the first blow. If he or she is mad at me, it is all over. It is very convenient to make a complaint or even make an angry comment when asking about something you don’t like or understand.
Conflict seems to be more natural for men. They can almost fight one minute and be friends the next. It can get pretty brutal one day and the next they are back to being the best of buds. Many women are different making a denigrating comment to another woman can end a relationship forever. So how does a woman react when someone puts them down. If they are depending on the relationship for support and security, they go into emergency crisis mode and/or feel “knocked up beside the head” by someone they thought loved and appreciated them.
Women can take a lot of negative comments from a man in a relationship often things the man forgets about as it wasn’t that serious to him or the man didn’t even realize the woman took it seriously or so hard. Men are constantly jousting, jockeying for position, and they don’t even think that seeing things ( from this perspective) that it was taken seriously.
When man “fools” around, he is just being a man. When a man gets it on with a woman he considers “easy”, he will often say later, when men are talking about women who are wh–res or sl-ts, that she is one of them. What does that make him? Some men have sex with a willing woman and then put her down for doing it.
What about countries where women who are the unwilling victims of rape are considered to blame for what happened, not the man who did it, and are put to death.
Aren’t men more easily turned on by physical things or how a woman looks to them and what they fantasize about her and then they blame the woman for leading them on when she refuses to cooperate or reciprocate their ardor. Women are more carried off by romantic notions and anticipated intimacy.
Why can’t a woman be more like a man (from “My Fair Lady”, the musical) and why can’t a man be more like a woman? Men and women are different in terms of what physiologically arouses them. This is why it takes longer for a woman to be ready for intercourse and longer to “come” to orgasm once she is aroused and her partner could become impatient.
Thus women sometimes “fake it” because the woman wants to please the man in order to support the relationship which is import to her. Women are often more concerned about pleasing others and putting the needs of others first before their own in order to do this.
Thus communication is important for the relationship, Sometimes men and sometimes even women expect the other person to instinctively know what turns the opposite sex on.
No wonder women when talking to other women talk about how they “fake” orgasms and they are more likely to have had “unwanted” sex especially the first time. Men have often had more solo practice at coming to orgasm and arousing themselves then women have so they may be more “ready” for sex than the woman is and can make a woman feel guilty if she doesn’t comply with their desires.
Sometimes a relationship implicitly implies that a couple will have sex. This can be the origin of a “date rape”. This can result in a man using the less than gracious “come on” line such as, “You wanna?” after a long, boring, and tedious date during which the man got drunk and ignored the woman.
Are there precious and gracious men out there? Yes there are. Ones who use rose petals and candles to set the stage (often for marriage proposals).
Atmosphere can be very important. Don’t choose a fishing camp or a hunting lodge for your first encounter whether before or after marriage. The back seats of cars and the typical bachelor pad are often not very romantic. In the front seat, the steering wheel and/or the gear shift can get in the way and the smell of dirty socks and well worn running shoes is often not very pleasant neither is a bare mattress that may have never seen sheets.. Nor is the possibility of a roommate snoring prone in the next bed or carrying on with another girl on the couch in the next room.
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