Roles and role plays in life

When you are playing multiple roles in life, as you usually are, the tasks that you need to fulfil for each of the roles seem to overlap at times. I am a counsellor by profession, and this role seems to sometimes pervade the roles that i play of a wife, a mother, a friend, a daughter... and so many other parts. It is so easy to demarcate the roles in other professions; but when it comes to being a counsellor, you are dealing with the fragile human mind, and emotions of a vulnerable human being. It becomes impossible at times to draw the lines as to when you stop being a counsellor and don the garb of a mother or a wife!

I have this strange issue of continuing being treated as a counsellor, even when i am not playing the role of one! Let me explain... I had gone on a trip with a family friend, and during the entire journey in the car, i was given the case of the man’s niece who was having a serious problem in her life. Her behaviour had turned bizarre and she had subsequently become moody and withdrawn, and also seemed to hate men in her life. This gentleman wanted to know how i could help this child...long-distance, second-hand counselling i call it!

Now the point is, i do not mind discussing people’s problems and giving my so-called expert advice. (though counselling is anything but giving advice but that is another story, and people seem to press a play button the moment they know i am a counsellor!) My contention is, if i continue being a counsellor 24x7, when do i be myself? The person who can be allowed to give vent to her feelings, her moods, even her tantrums at times, or just relax and enjoy life’s small pleasures? When can i be a mother to my children, an uncritical wife to my husband, without reading meaning to each and every sentence they speak or view every action of theirs in a psychological perspective? The irony is, even when i do try to do so, the opinion is that i am speaking from my experience as a counsellor, and not as a role that i am supposed to be in at that time!

There is also another angle to this whole thing. Other than my interpersonal relations being viewed only from the standpoint of me being a counsellor, even my normal, human emotions would be denied, deriding them as ‘not being professional’! Do you continue to be professional in all spheres of your life, all the time, and experience ‘professional’ feelings? When i give in to a natural emotion and consequently snap at somebody because the question warranted maybe just a flippant retort, i am immediately labelled the ‘counsellor’! And with this label comes the one of being ‘professional’, so i should be able to handle relations deftly, be just right, say just the right things and do the right things! The load sometimes becomes so heavy that there have been days when i have withdrawn completely, cancelled all appointments, cut off all communication, and hibernated, and only then managed to get in touch with my inner self, which would have been very confused, and maybe manifested as a personality issue! I guess this is the vagary of being in this profession, where unlike any other vocation, you are handling feelings, which never cease to exist... so consequently, one will not be able to see a counsellor as an individual who also is as human as the client she is handling. The only difference would be that she maybe has the tool to reason out a situation, by means of the numerous theories and therapies that she has knowledge of, and then realise and discount people’s reactions!

Not that it really helps to handle the omnipresent feelings though!

Two is not company

Today was a very disturbing day. As a practising counsellor, i normally feel that listening to emotional baggage is part of my job, and my training has helped me deal with avoidance of transference. However, i was not prepared for today’s onslaught of cases. All the three cases in a row, one after the other, involved the disturbing behaviour of very young children in school, also resulting in failing academics. Per force, i was forced to call for the parents; for the home environment contributes a lot to the way a child behaves in school. We adults are forced by systems and rules not to carry our emotional baggage to our place of work; however, children displace their emotions in schools!

Anyway, the first set of parents walked in, but when they sat down, they left a vacant chair in between them. I sensed that something was not working here, and when i placed the issue of the disturbing behaving of their toddler in school, they looked at each other. As they were answering my questions in monosyllables, i suggested that i talk to them separately. They could not be more relieved! The mother had an earful of complaints against the husband, and she emphatically stated that the marriage was not working from day one! She has managed to move out after 5 years of living together, and the son was with her during the week, and the husband took the child to his place of living on week-ends (well, i could hardly term it home could i?) At the end of the tirade, almost as an afterthought, she wanted to know what was wrong with her son! I chose to reserve my comments, and then had a session with the father. He had exactly the same kind of complaints that his wife had registered, which would have been amusing, if it had not been such a serious situation! I mean, here they were claiming they could not get along and did not see eye to eye even on a single topic; yet, they were totally in agreement in their view of each other! They were not even willing to work on the relationship, and though they had taken no legal steps as yet, both of them were sure that it will not be long before they do the rounds of the lawyers, family courts and mediation counselling.

In all this, i think they did not even pause to think what damage they were doing to the child. As an example of the trauma that the child was going through, he told me, when i was talking to him, that he hates it when someone talks loudly to him, he hates noises, for his home was full of noise: his parents were always quarrelling, hurling abuses and accusations at each other. I could imagine this child sitting in the middle of the room, with the parents throwing barbs at each other, and this child ducking every time!

There was no big resolution to this case; at least the first session was largely history taking. But the session left me feeling drained; and with so many unanswered questions. Like, why do couples decide to sustain a relationship they know would never last a lifetime? Why do they get into a relationship because it would require too much effort to ‘cancel a wedding’ as this particular mother stated? And the most vital question, why go ahead and decide to have a child and the additional and awesome responsibility of being parents when you have not yet learnt to be partners?

I am not advocating easy dissolution of relationships; in fact i work with lawyers who try their utmost to help the couples who approach them for the first hearing, to try and help them make the relationship work, not because of social pressure, but because the cause for the conflict may be something that can be worked on. But what i mean is, when you are so sure that the partnership is doomed right from day one, is there any sense in putting another human being through the trauma?

Mohana Narayanan

I have learned after existing in this world for almost half a century that the best way to be at peace here is to pretend that you are the sole survivor of a holocaust, and that you are alone in your existence. I am not advocating the life of Robinson Crusoe, who yearned for human company on a desolate island. I am talking about the solitude and the complete self-sufficiency that Thoreau spoke about when he wrote Walden Pond. I am talking about the attitude of being self-reliant that Emerson wrote about. We all need to realise that somewhere in our lifetimes, we need to take responsibility for our own choices, for our own decisions. We all also need to understand that if we have helping hands, then they are there not to make us dependent on them, but to simply accept the help offered gracefully, as a bonus, and not to set store any expectations by them. At any point and at any time, the withdrawal can occur; and then we may be left floundering, helpless, wondering how we would ever manage.

I think this policy would also help us handle our relationships better. Strangely, i have always handled crisis in my life on my own; not to say that i do not have friends or people who would support me in times of need. But by some strange quirk of fate, more often than not, i have found that these people have not been immediately around to help me ground myself; and for that i am grateful to them. Their unavailability, because of their other commitments, or because of them unable to explain my need to their significant others, has made me so much more capable of handling life on my own, and made me so much stronger. I am able to connect deeply with my inner strength and able to face crisis without buckling under. To an extent, i think this strength is also resented by them a little; i mean, how can i not ask for help?!

I realised how long a way i have come, when my maid today announced that she would not be able to come to work for me. I did not bat an eyelid, just told her to go ahead and suit herself. I know it is going to be tough but i refused to let that perturb me, i decided to handle things as they came along.

I also realised that i no longer needed to talk things out to people who i thought understood me; I am able to sort out issues on my own, with my inner dialogue and arrive at an equilibrium. This could have been also because in a lot of situations, i was unable to talk when i needed to: what is it that they say about necessity being the mother of invention? I found i had handled this need in me successfully, and today the lack of the shoulder to cry on no longer bothered me.

Do i sound anti-social? I assure you, i am not so. It is just that i have realised that there is so much more comfort and peace when you are able to do things on your own, without waiting for it to be done for you. There is so much less hassle if you are not waiting for the phone call that never comes, for the mail that never arrives and for the words that are suppose to erase hurts... when you do not spend your life waiting, there is more living happening.....

Mohana Narayanan

December 9,2009

Games of Life

The phone call was made after a lot of deliberation, and after a lot of time lapse. Simply because she wanted matters to die down, for emotions to settle down and for her to reflect on whether she was kicking off without thought. (Maybe also somewhere she was waiting for the phone call to be made from the other side, to acknowledge her hurt, the amending call). But the hurt still was as fresh as ever, and no wonder; because how do hurts heal? Not when you ignore them, but when you acknowledge their existence and you feel that the hurt has been given a balm, when it is spoken about and an attempt is made to at least make you feel that the matter is understood, and that corrective steps would be taken. She continued to hurt still, even after the phone call, simply because she realised that what she said was not even comprehended or her hurt acknowledged.

She came from a family where the siblings vied with each other for the attention of the parents. The parents did parenting the best they knew: instinctive parenting comes naturally. But in the process, technical difficulties like handling complexes of the children, whether real or imagined, sibling rivalry, competition, and underlying resentments went unattended. So did blows to self-esteem when one of them would be forced to buy peace at the cost of offending her sense of being and of self-worth. They grew up and grew away. They lived their own lives, coming together now and again and then growing apart. The eldest of them all totally broke away, perhaps comfortable being geographically away. The middle one, perhaps the one who bore the brunt of the sibling issues, though in close proximity, felt emotionally weaned away, growing both in terms of developing external relationships and also thus more adept at managing them better. The youngest remained with the family the longest, and thus continued to be in some ways the baby of the family.

Shouldn’t life have settled down then? Old issues forgotten and the siblings coming together? Well, it did not happen. The situation of the first child continued to be the same: detached, and thus convenient. She would make an appearance now and then, upsetting the equilibrium of the family.

The second one would be around to pick up the pieces of any major storms, and then later be blamed for doing so! The third daughter continued to be the martyr, ‘forced to take on the responsibility of the aged parents’, simply because she happened to be in the same city.

I guess this garb of the most important person gave this child the liberty to unofficially take on the role of the mascot in the family. She would go into fits of moody disposition, making people wish they had never gone to their place. She would throw her weight around, make sure everyone would be very uncomfortable around her, simply because she was the source of immediate comfort to her parents, and they felt that she was doing a lot for them, so they had to be obligated to her. In the process, any action of hers which would naturally generate hurt in someone would be overlooked, by simply stating that the person was being ‘misunderstood’.

Her demeanour was simply what it is: and anybody getting hurt was simply being ‘oversensitive’. No amends would be made to repair any hurts, and just a time lag was sufficient enough for her between her erratic behaviour and her next conversation. Any attempts at trying to talk out issues with her, would be like talking to an autistic child: she simply would not listen! The sheer defensive attitude would make one wonder why make the attempt at all! Games being played over and over again, till the payoffs were no longer necessary. Then once the game changed, the payoffs stopped coming; and then the games stopped.

I guess the game here was: come on hurt me: and once the need for hurt (the payoff) was not needed, the game was changed: and thus the whole process of gaming stopped. What was lost in the bargain remains to be seen; maybe yet another relationship; maybe the closure of yet another chapter. But she was much more at peace, for she had decided to live life by her terms now. It was not arrogance: simply compliance to her inner need to be herself and stem this dichotomy within her.

Mohana Narayanan

December 8,2009

Feet on ground reality

The child told me that as you grow older, your attention span would decrease, and that is the reason that he is not able to study well! Wondering from where he got this theory, i looked questioningly at the mother. She told me wryly that it was a line from Garfield, the comic cat, who was her son’s favourite cartoon character.

Though i was very amused at the whole thing, it set me thinking. We have so many profound statements being made by cartoon characters, and if a child is going to imbibe them as life-truths, then we would indeed have a tough time! What we would need to instil in the child here is the quality of discerning what truth is, and what fiction is. Fantasy world is something that all of us escape to, at some time or the other in our lives. I guess it would be called some form of escapism, but then if we do not attempt to get back to reality, then it would become a problem, not otherwise. Going into the fantasy world gives us a break from the harsh realities of life, but we need to walk into the garden of fantasy as in Alice in Wonderland, equipped with the key to come back through the door, and not lose the key. I guess we are also programmed to dream for the same reason. But what happens when we do go into this world and adapt it to be our real existence? Then it becomes a pathology. In this world, we are at liberty to frame our own laws, live life the way we want, and have complete control over the entire universe. It is such a wonderful feeling, of being in control!

We are able to become super beings that have super powers; we have the supremacy over all that we behold, be it money, relationships, power­... we call the shots. This euphoric feeling would be the like of being God: (Remember Bruce Almighty?)! However, even he was God only for ten days!

The crash of coming back to reality is softened, if we are emotionally healthy, and equipped with coping skills to deal with the real environment. We then understand that what happens in the world of comic characters and the dream world looks and sounds good: but maybe too good to be true, and the real world with its share of miseries, misfortunes, missed opportunities and disappointments is still worth living in. For it is definitely much more concrete and less ethereal than the world of magic and fairyland and glib one-liners. So whether it is the wisdom of Garfield, or the precocious philosophy of Calvin, give me the real-world caricatured human beings anytime: I can take them head-on!

Mohana Narayanan

Curtains of deception

The day of prevention of child sexual abuse came and went. We had lectures, demonstrations, and awareness programmes, which hopefully will help public to prevent child abuse.

Just two days after ‘celebrating’ this day, i had to handle a child who has had a very complicated parenting, and is undergoing a lot of emotional issues. The child was brought up by surrogate parents, and she was the daughter of the father’s sister. This fact was revealed to her when she was around ten years of age, and she was just assimilating this fact, when this surrogate mother conceived, and delivered a child. Meanwhile, on the pretext that this girl was not behaving properly and also that the mother had her hands full with the second child, she was packed off to be with her aunt in the city. This aunt, though very affectionate, was not able to emotionally support the child.

The final straw came when the husband of this aunt tried to paw the child and hounded her with his unwanted attentions. This 13-year-old adolescent had her cup of trauma full. She was not performing well academically, and on this issue, the aunt came to see me with the child. The child kept insisting that she wanted to go back to her parents, but the aunt managed to convince her to stay on and study in the city. When the child walked into my consultation room, she seemed full of woe. The aunt gave me the background, omitting the vital facts of the unwanted attention that was being paid to the girl by her husband (Yes, she was aware of the fact! The girl had told her and apparently, since he denied the whole thing, it suited her to believe his version). She wanted me to convince the girl to study well, give her study skills, and make sure that the girl settles down. According to her, all that was wrong was that her husband was a person who was very strict since he was in the police force.

The child was broken, traumatised and urging to go back to her hometown. I sent for the parents. I called the child in, and made her tell her mother what was happening. The mother looked suitably shocked, but then tells me, that she suspected it all along; he had tried this tactic even with her!

How i handled the case is not of great relevance here, though for purposes of completing the narration, i called the aunt and the mother for sessions, and convinced the mother to take the child back with her.

What kind of a parent knowingly allows her child to be in the vicinity of a man who is programmed to abuse women? Was it because this child was not hers biologically? Or is this a basic helplessness of women in our society, who are scared of voicing their protest for fear of social disapproval?

As long as we continue subjecting ourselves and our loved ones to such behind-the-screen acts, such abuses will continue. As long as we do not internalise the sheer anger and disgust at the emotional and sexual abuse that children are being subjected to, and externalise our protests vociferously, this malaise will continue to fester in our society. Can we please stop hiding behind fake walls of family honour and decency, and give children what they long for? Security?

MOHANA NARAYANAN