A God Shot….

I saw a movie a week or so ago called “Thanks For Sharing”. It’s about members of a sex addiction group dealing with their issues. I think it’s a great flick. As a shrink, I thought it was good because it was realistic in terms of mental health issues. At one point, a character named Neil helps another named Dede get through a tough moment.  It’s only when they meet up that Neil reveals he was about to relapse himself when she called. Dede then says “Looks like we both got a God shot”. Stellar line…I totally dig it.

Over the past few weeks, life has been heavy. Nothing I couldn’t handle but just way to much at once for my taste. My mom getting sick and winding up in ER, two weeks later I get sick and wind up in ER, and studying for test and not really getting to enjoy my summer 100%. I’ve used up all my sick and vaca time studying or taking time off for this test so I can’t take time off in august as I usually do. That in turn stressed me out and I’ve gained back most of the weight I’ve lost over the past few months.  I got the results back the day before my birthday and I failed to reach the mark again. Happy birthday to me. My mom always tells me God will squeeze you but he won’t choke you.  God is going to get the following iMessage from me: “Dear God, please stop squeezing so hard. And if you insist, at least squeeze some of the fat away. That would make up for some of the madness of the last few weeks. Peace out, Me”. Needless to say, I’ve been feeling L O W and work is the last place I want to be…..but I clearly needed to be there.

I have a patient I will call Missy. She’s nine going on 25. She’s incredibly precocious, intelligent, and an athletic powerhouse. I’ve seen many a prepubescent boy walk away from a basketball game with her, picking up the pieces of his shattered ego as he walked by. But truth be told, Missy drove me nuts. She found my last nerve at least once a month and tap danced all over it.  She was a challenge to my clinical skills and she knew it. I had to remind myself that this was “a true learning opportunity”. Her mother, while very much from the hood, knew when to turn it on and off. I liked this mom a lot because she didn’t allow others to label her. She was a tough cookie who would fight for her kids tooth and nail but would be the first one to step aside when a teacher gave her kids consequences because, in her words, “they were acting a fool”. Missy’s mom saw the value of being in treatment and didn’t feel it was just for crazy people.  She was always open to reflection and often asked for feedback. I’d worked with this family for three years and yesterday was our final session  because Missy was being transferred to a charter school. I thought this was going to be an easy smooth termination. But alas, the universe had other plans for me.

I started telling Missy all the ways I’ve seen her change in a positive way as well as the things I hoped she would continue to work on. She spoke about everything she learned. She talked about the times she hated when I gave her a reality check, especially when I was right. I shared with her a few of my own experiences in school when I found myself having to work harder to accomplish things as well as times when things just didn’t turn out the way I expected despite all my efforts. And then came the detour when she said, “But Doc, sometimes it’s just so hard and I get tired”. I paused and thought about the last few weeks and said “Sometimes you won’t know the rhyme or reason of why you’re going through something until it’s done. So no matter how hard things get, don’t give up. You can take a break, you can get mad, and you can get sad, but promise me you won’t give up.” In my head I wondered if I was still talking just to Missy. Her mom started to cry and told me that her kids may not be perfect but Missy was a better person for having known me. I started to feel my eyes well up when Missy pulled a little beany baby Rottweiler from a bag with a card. “I promise I won’t give up Doc. I’m gonna miss you.”

They left and the tears flowed.  Looks like we both got a God shot.

 

 

My Kobayashi Maru

In Star Trek, the cadets are given a test called The Kobayashi Maru when they are applying to be a captain . It’s actually the name of a ship they are sent to rescue. It’s a no-win scenario designed to see how they think and work under pressure. In the original series and movies, Captain Kirk failed it three times before he changed the conditions and passed. His rationale is since the test was a cheat in itself, he had to reprogram the test to make it more fair. In the 2009 movie, you never really figure out how Chris Pine’s version of Kirk manages to pass the test. It appears that he dealt with the conditions of the test in a different way and just redefined the problem. They expected him to wig out and he didn’t. He dealt with it his own cocky way and beat the test. Somewhere on the internet, I read that the back story is that the green chic he was spending time with (Uhura’s roommate) talked in her sleep, and he used that info to his advantage.

In real life, a kobayashi maru is not that simple, but you go through them all the time. So then how do you deal?

A few weeks ago, it happened again. I didn’t pass for the 11th time. I didn’t cry. I just sat and thought…where is the lesson in this? All I could think was how I felt embarrassed and angry at the same time. How is it that people I knew that didn’t have half the chops I did took this exam and passed? Then I started getting into my own head. You know, when you have those moments of people who tell you shit that you start to wonder have any grain of truth.  In middle school, I had to take an ESL test because of my surname…mind you, I was in an accelerated academic program…but somehow, my ability to speak English was questioned by powers that be that knew nothing about me except my name. In grad school, I was told by an instructor that my grades were average because I went to public school…seriously dude???  Another one told me it was going to take me much longer to get to where I’m going. When I asked him to elaborate, he said he couldn’t but that I should think about that. It was clear that while these weren’t instances of having failed something, the experience was similar…and I realized, man, you have been here before. But why can’t you get out of THIS one? What are you NOT doing? What have you MISSED?

The last time I took the test, I knew I didn’t pass. The material I knew, I really knew. The stuff I didn’t, I felt was written by Klingons. I knew all the words, but when I put them all together, it made no sense at all. And all I could think was “What the motherfuck is this??” I knew for sure this was NOT in the materials. When I got my score, I did a lot better than I thought I did….I missed the mark by two points. This exam is curved, so I don’t know how many questions I missed by…but there it was in front of me…73. Then I got into my own head to try to disprove what I thought to be true up until then. I know I speak English because that test in middle school said so. I got average grades because I was an average student….and I went to public school, yes. But contrary to Dr. Asshole’s statement, one did not cause the other. That was his opinion. And as my trusty stats instructor, Dr. W, taught me, I know that a correlation is not the same as causation. In other words, public school and average grades may be related, but one does not necessarily cause the other. But the last one I can’t disprove. It has taken me a lot longer to get to where I’m going…and that is true. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going anywhere and that I haven’t been moving.

Then I realized, I missed it. It’s about the process. It’s having reconnected with someone from grad school who has been a wealth of support in this exam and in my profession. It’s accepting help from my left-handed dad to pay for the exam. It’s allowing myself to have fun with friends who have nothing to do with this process but happily say “you will get it next time!” and genuinely mean it. It’s being ok with ordering out dinner because Al knows I’m tired and loves an excuse to have his favorite pizza. It’s appreciating the process of others in being successful in their journey without wondering when it will be your turn, because at that time, it isn’t and that’s ok. It’s appreciating all that you have without being pissed off about what you don’t have. It’s taking a workshop you thought wouldn’t be helpful and learning something new. These have been all my Kobayashi Maru moments….it’s how I have responded to the pressure to pass and not meeting that particular goal. It’s about the way I have dealt with being disappointed.

Every failure, every success, and every detour takes you somewhere you weren’t before. I’d be an idiot to think that after passing this test, because I WILL pass, means the end of learning. In the workshop, the instructor teaches you how to answer a question when you don’t know what theory or material they are talking about. At one point, there was a question that referred to a theory that doesn’t even exist. That set off a light bulb in my head, because now the questions written in Klingon made sense. So the question is, what do you do when you don’t have the answer?  What do you do when you know there isn’t a right answer but you still have to respond? I’ve learned that you have to trust your instincts.  It’s that moment that you can’t respond the way you normally would that is the true test of your character. You have to trust that everything you have done up until that point has a purpose, even if you don’t know what it is at the moment.

 

 

How I got my Irish accent…

Today I met with a 10 year old girl I will call Ellie. During our session, the internal phone rang and I picked it up. Normally I don’t pick up the phone during sessions, but when the call comes internally, I pick it up because sometimes it’s just someone letting me know that my next patient has arrived. Unbeknownst to me, the main office forwarded a call from a parent. The call was brief as the parent wanted to confirm an appointment for the following week. When I hung up, Ellie asked “Dr. M, why do you have a Jewish accent?” I was confused and asked her to elaborate. She said “No, that’s not what I mean. It’s Irish….why did you speak with an Irish accent when you were on the phone?” I was completely confused and asked her again what she meant by that. So she decided to imitate me and out of her mouth came my same words, sounding like she was imitating someone on television….her accent gone….sounding “white”. It made me smile and give her the explanation I thought was best, which I will tell you about in a few.

When I was in elementary school, I was painfully shy. Looking back, I probably had separation anxiety disorder with a sprinkling of social phobia. I was a bright kid who was way more comfortable around adults than my same aged peers. They picked up on that and called me “Einstein”. If I was not in Brooklyn and it wasn’t the mid 1970’s, that would probably be a good thing. But being smart in a working class neighborhood wasn’t what made me fit in or popular by any means. I did have some friends, but for the most part, I never really felt like I fit. I thought differently and dealt with things differently and….well….that made me different.

Middle school was great. I was skipped a year but I was in a program with other kids who got skipped too. It was awesome….I was in a class of nerds just like me. It was ok to be smart and I felt safe to think and speak my mind. There were a great deal of kids way smarter than me so I didn’t feel out of place.

High school was a fuckin nightmare. I went to a vocational school where the goal was to learn a trade because they didn’t expect you to go to college. When I applied for my SATs, my guidance counselor said “You know, you don’t really need to take those. You don’t have to waste your time because you can get into school without them.” I took them anyway. My peers asked to borrow my homework. They also asked why I “sounded like a white girl” and “always used big words”. My school was very segregated. It was the mid 80’s by then. So you either hung out with the urban crowd of Latino and Black kids, wore Adidas, and listened to Run DMC, MC Lyte, Slick Rick, and Dougie Fresh or you hung out with the White kids, teased your hair as high as it could go with Stiff Stuff, and listened to Bon Jovi, Poison, Duran Duran, and Tears for Fears. I liked both, but that wasn’t allowed. The urban crowd let me know, with words, that since I sounded like a white girl, I was not welcome in their crowd and I needed to hang out with the white people….so I did…and my white friends didn’t care what I listened to. But when they called someone a Spic, they made sure to add their qualifier “but we don’t mean you”. So this girl, who sounded white, took her SATs, applied to a CUNY school, and followed in the footsteps of her sisters who had already paved the way to the ‘white sounding world’.

When I was done, I got a job at a social service agency working in one of the courts in NYC. I manned the phones and was pulled aside by my supervisor one day. He told me that the clinic director didn’t like the way I answered the phone. He said I wasn’t “professional”. I thought ‘shit, all this time people telling me I sounded white, now this dude is telling me this shit. WTF?!?’ So I figured maybe I just sounded too ‘Brooklyn’. So as a joke, when I picked up the phone, I made believe that I worked on the Home Shopping Network. I enunciated every single word….and called that my ‘white people voice’ as an ode to my elementary and high school years. Sure enough, the feedback was that I was ‘much improved’.

The truth of the matter was, I HATED when people said I spoke like a white girl. In actuality, I sounded educated. And in a place and environment where one struggles to fit in, sounding that way was not a compliment. But when Ellie said I sounded Irish, I knew exactly what she meant. But here….now….years after being called Einstein and being told I sound white…there is this little girl wondering why a seemingly Latina woman has an Irish accent. She didn’t say it with disdain or with an air of unapproval. She was genuinely curious and smiled patiently as she waited for me to respond. I said “You know Ellie that’s a good question because I hadn’t noticed my Irish accent. When I speak to grown ups, I have to make sure to sound professional and I do that by not using any slang and enunciating. Do you know what that means?” Ellie said no. “It means that I pronounce the whole word…so I usually say to you ‘See you latah’ but on the phone I said ‘See you later’…is that the accent you hear?” to which Ellie exclaimed “YES!”. So I said “Well, I guess that’s why I have an Irish accent”. She seemed content with that explanation and went about finishing up her drawing and complaining about her siblings.

So, as I sit here, writing this post, listening to an 80’s rock station, I’m thinking how cool it is that Ellie was able to take that with her. She may hear someone with an ‘Irish’ accent and not think of it as something to reject but as a way to speak that is professional, educated, and positive. Ellie gave me some food for thought today too. Things would have been so much easier for me as a kid if someone would have just told me I had an Irish accent 🙂

2012….

So I got up this morning, ready to tackle the world.  Go to get good french bread from supermarket, wait for the elevator, the doors open and omg yuck….clearly someone had too much to drink last night. Off I go to take the stairs, there is silly string and random party stuff in hallway. When I get to third floor, the laundry carts from basement are there…man, if I could only see the security tapes from last night!! Anyhoo, as I continue down to the first floor, I reflected upon my New Year’s Eve. I spent it quietly at home with Al, trying to figure out how I missed Selena Gomez just after midnight. I think I literally knocked out after calling my fam after midnight. Just a few hours before, I was ‘skyping’ with a one of my friends, Gizmo, who lives all of  10 minutes away from me. We decided we were gonna make some goals for the new year. I rarely do this as I consider New Year’s Eve just another day. My official New Year’s Day is in August, when I was born…so I make resolutions then. But in my desire to do something different, I figured what the hell. Then after writing them all down, we decided we are going to check in every month to see what we have accomplished and what we need to tweak. So I’ve decided to check in here….on my blog.

1. Pass my exam. I want to pass for my own personal reasons. I need to pass to keep my job for another year. I need to pass so I can do what I genuinely want to do…and that is the ability to ‘just be’.

2. Stop procrastinating. That is a ridiculously vague goal; I am very aware of this. However, just like fat people know they need to lose weight, beautiful people know they can get over,  and Wile E. Coyote knows he will never catch Roadrunner (I know he did in one episode but Wile was tiny so I don’t count that), I know exactly what I need to stop procrastinating about. It’s minor things that add up to big things. I need to do my laundry on the regular so I don’t have loads so big I wonder how I got there to begin with, I need to hand in my paperwork at the job on a timely manner, and I need to study consistently so I can pass my exam. Funny how I thought there were more things, and I am sure there are, but those appear to be the top three things.

3. I need to go to the gym at least three times a week. I’ve been pretty good with that since the beginning of October. My plan is to just keep it up.

4. Stop biting my nails. This is something I have been able to do before, so I know I can do it. I just have to stop it. Easier said than done I know, but I just have to do it.

5. Treat myself to a manicure or pedicure once a month. Hopefully this will help me achieve goal 4. I’ve tried doing this at home, but the flexibility required to do my toes and not make them look like I polished them with a paintball gun is impossible for me.

6. Learn to meditate. I dig meditation music…I fall asleep to it all the time.  I will join a class by the end of the month.

7. Take a photography class. I’ve been meaning to do this FOREVER. I love taking pics…so all else fails and I don’t, I aspire to just take more pictures in general.

8. Random: I plan to memorize all the words to the Big Bang Theory theme song….just because.

The bird in this pic…I named him DeNiro…bc I swear he’s sayin “You lookin at me??”

Happy 2012 🙂