I bought a little, summer dress the other week. It has paisleys on it. Paisleys! Everything old is new again. I don’t believe I have worn paisley since high school. Remember the Beatles Summer of Love (1967)? [Lin/Linda: Long live Beatlemania!]
Anyway, that is just a bit of nostalgia to help us feel more positive. In truth, I am writing about the dress because it – and what I have on with it – represent a bit of, well, defiance on my part.
Now I have you curious.? I will let you mull a second before I tell you. Nothing bad. Capri leggings and sneaker ‘slides’, no backs on the shoes. Bright red. Definitely not a little, old lady outfit.
I have been having some problems with the people putting on this week-long seminar. They have been reasonably OK with my being visually impaired. (Like they have a choice? I am not above screaming ADA.) The problem is they arranged for continuing education credit for social workers but not for psychologists! They are now scrambling to try to rectify that little oversight and I am wondering if it is still worth my going!
I got very judgmental about this oversight. Just because psychologists will be in the minority, just because we are different, we should not be ignored! What rude event managers!
Then I felt bad about being judgmental and thought about conforming as much as I could and keeping my mouth shut. We different people can be such bothers!
Then I started thinking how I have a right to be different, to be me. Next thing you know I have on my paisley dress, leggings and red shoes and I am off to work! So I am different. Deal.
And the DBT skill that is? Opposite action to urge. I had the urge to just slink away but, since I had done nothing wrong and there was no reason for me to feel I was wrong by being different, I did the opposite to the urge and presented myself as even more different! My action was opposite to my ‘wrong’ urge.
Thinking about the above situation made me wonder how many of you feel guilty about being ‘different’, about being such ‘bothers’ to the rest of the world. Who just tries to muddle along without any special consideration because you don’t want to put people out?
Goodtherapy.org did a 2013 article on shame and the disabled. Shame is different from guilt. Guilt is feeling bad for what you did. Shame is feeling bad for being who you are. Goodtherapy reported people can limit themselves severely because of the shame they feel about having a disability.
In a 2010 posting on intentblog.com RainMacs the blogger, talked about snarky comments and feeling paranoid about being “found out”. This was even though she was not faking!
Most of the posting I found were blogs with very few of them being research. Sort of surprising I did not find a lot of research because nearly all of the blogs mentioned guilt and shame as emotions of those with sight loss. No one seemed to pick up on that as a research topic.
So to recap: I am different. Sometimes I feel guilty about that. Sometimes this square peg would really like to fit into a round hole. Sometimes it would be nice not to have to ‘inconvenience’ people.
Then I stop and ask two questions: did I do anything wrong? Is there something inherently ‘wrong’ about me? If I can answer “no” to both of those questions, I put on a cute, paisley dress with leggings and bright red sneakers. And that difference about me? I flaunt it. It is alright to be me, flaws and all.
This little light…let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
Written May 4th, 2018