Over the trenches once more

I actually went to University for the first time at the age of 36. After a number of years at home raising our children we were finding it more difficult to make ends meet, and so I tried to re-enter the work force.  Doors shut in my face. It was made too obvious that they considered that my brain could only have solidified and my skills all but vanished.  So I applied to University and was accepted.

The first literature assignment I handed in came back with a mark of 12 out of 20. I stood in my lecturer’s office and cried because I thought I was never going to make it. Obviously I was stupid and was never going make it to ever graduate. Right in that moment it was all or nothing to me. This one setback, a low mark,  was enough to jump start my defeatist mind set and have me on the verge of running all the way back to my home sweet home.

However, I was able to muster the right or more positive responses to allow me to continue and even to flourish at University. I managed a credit for that unit in the first semester, and a High Distinction for following.

A friend had a similar experience when she embarked on journalism studies. One of the lecturers was an abrasive man who worked the students hard. Each week he made them do a general knowledge test and would be dismissive of anyone who would fail. His real method was to make the students aware that journalism was in fact a nasty business and you had to be tough to make it. If not there was the door. She ran for that door as fast as she could and for the past 15 years has blamed the lecturer for her “career loss”. She did go back to university but chose a course that had little hope of actually leading to a real career in Australia. She has worked in food service or retail every since.

So why did she default to helplessness so readily? She appeared not to be able to see that everything was not all or nothing. There is more than one way open to us. I assessed my options and decided that I had to work  smarter, she looked around and decided there were no options for her except to run away. Passivity, fear and depression have ruled her life ever since.

My friend decided that she wouldn’t just give up on this specific battle but with the tape on repeat in her head continually, she embraced the decision to capitulate on every issue. This feeling of helplessness that she took as her mantel  has allowed her to shun real responsibility for choices and the frustrations she experiences continuously.  My friend blames fate, circumstances and particularly other people for what befalls her. Somehow she never mobilized her own energy to overcome roadblocks to her goals.

How has she done this? She makes long lists of the negatives or disadvantages. Catastrophe  thinking.  I never hear her speak of positives. No little train that thinks it can. All defeats are so serious that she rehashes them continuously. Years after the fact, she is still generalizing it to her entire existence.

Why can I see these tendencies in her and she can’t see them herself? She willingly gives into them but never stops to think why is it so? Her frustrations bring her down and she sees all defeats as permanent and long term. She lives an immobilized life always waiting for the next hit which of course does come because she sets herself up in the crosshairs every time.  She surrenders before the first shot, when she perhaps should be singing I think I can, I think I can as she goes over the top of the trenches.