Wednesday, January 13, 2010

dealing with the crazy

recently my sister was involved in a work situation involving a crazy person. as i was trying to offer her advice on the matter i realized that i happen to know quite a bit about dealing with crazies...i think because of all my work in customer service (i have basically been a secretary for 16 years now) and also my work with dementia and alzheimer patients i have amassed some basic hands on knowledge of dealing with crazy. the first thing i realized/learned is 1. you can't change crazy...the second being 2. you can't argue logically with crazy

this has helped me personally with some very difficult people and personal situations and i wanted to share something i heard on the radio today that created an "aha" moment for me - it puts what i was trying to tell my sister into a great perspective. I was listening to Dr. Laura (love her or hate her, she is wise in a lot of areas) and a caller called in and wanted to know what to do about her unloving mother (who had always been unloving) Dr Laura was telling her that there was nothing to do - just accept it. She said if her mother was in a wheelchair she would have to accept that she would never play tennis with her and that her mother is disabled, but emotionally rather than physically.

i loved that. how easy is it for us to accept physical limitations of people because they are right in front of our faces, but when it comes to our other expectations - emotional/social/spiritual - we can often allow ourselves to be let down by the same people over and over and over again.

i personally have one person in mind that i keep hoping will change and keep being let down by. i am not going to do this anymore. i am going to accept her limitations and not expect things to get better. i am going to change my attitude and my acceptance....whew...feeling better about it already!

3 comments:

the BLAH BLAH BLAHger said...

oooooh, this is a good one!

Paige said...

Oh Carlee. I can't believe you would talk about me like that, in such a public forum.

xoxo.

Mor Mor said...

I think I know who you are speaking about and I have a similar problem, But, I have a hard time accepting it and cannot believe that the relationship has to go on and on and on in a crazy way. I keep wanting to believe there is a magic fix and if you just try a lot of different things one will work. But...I'm reconsidering.