Stress comes about through not facing something that needs facing. Confront is a good term, one definition means “to face without flinching or avoiding.” That which you can face, you can handle. Let’s say someone at work is giving you a hard time, and you try to be nice, but no dice, the hard times continue with that person attempting to undermine you, trip you up, point out your failings.
Stress builds up, you avoid that person, feel nervous or angry when he or she is around, etc. Go to a psych and you’ll be given some kind of medication.
Confronting, on the other hand, would most likely mean you walk up to that person and ask what’s up, why are they giving you a hard time? At that precise moment, you have gone from being effect, to being cause, and even if the person attacks you verbally, you are going to feel better. You stood up to them, you’ve pushed through whatever obstacles that stood in your way, gone “outside your comfort zone,” and changed the game.
Recently, many women have begun to confront the fact that men have abused them. They felt in some cases that they couldn’t face their abusers or take them to task — for inappropriate behavior, or even rape in some cases — as it would harm their careers, look like they participated, embroil them in ugly court cases, etc. Now it is all coming out, the confront is on, and while the accused are innocent until proved guilty, it looks like things are changing in the sexual harassment front. Women are speaking out.
Bullying bothers parents, and they get very upset when their children are bullied. They change schools, put the kids on anti-depressants, etc. That’s not confront, that’s backing off, and that is bound to increase stress. Only facing up to the perpetrator will put one at cause.
When I was in third grade, my father sent me over to a neighbor who had been a boxer. He had two kids about my age, and taught us to fight. Martial arts training is a good thing for kids to learn. Cowardice only makes one a target of the bullies, and even if they are bigger, standing up to them is the only way to gain any space or grudging respect.
And by the way, most martial arts don’t encourage aggression. If you have the skills to defend yourself, you are more able to confront the bully. If necessary you can defend yourself, but it’s not usually necessary. Someone standing up to a bully is often enough to cause the bully to back off and look for another, less self-assured target. However, in these days of gangs and drug-induced psychosis, running away may be the most sane thing to do, but with self assurance it can be a decision rather than a frightened reaction and that makes a big difference.
The danger comes in not facing something or someone. Hiding out from a bill collector rather than looking for a second job, telling everyone, “I’m dyslexic” instead of buckling down and learning to read.
OK, right about now I can imagine some protests that dyslexia, ADHD, ADD etc. etc. are real disorders. But assuming they were real, who would make the best progress, the person who throws up his hands says he has this brain disorder and there’s nothing he can do except take his medication, or the person who does whatever he can to overcome it?
I hear people quite often in social settings say that were diagnosed with depression, or dyslexia or they have an eating disorder, etc. etc. Why do they announce it to people in a social setting? Probably because they have incorporated that supposed disability into the way they define themselves – it is part of how they see themselves. And at the exact moment they make that decision, they have crippled themselves by agreeing to that disabled label.
In a talk-only counseling session, that’s a different matter, and those statements can be very helpful to the process. But announcing some disability in a social setting is not helpful and is an invalidation of self.
Depending on your view of life, religion or philosophical background, one might look at human beings as the tip of a long line of genetic and spiritual development, living in a time of great efforts to ensure fairness and equality, in perhaps the most affluent society the world has ever known. And yet you see bedraggled men and women with exaggerated limps looking for handouts at traffic lights carrying signs appealing for money, sleeping under bridges wrapped in garbage bags as if they were human garbage.
Nobody is perfect, and there are sick and insane people struggling to survive, but most likely you aren’t one of them, so stop acting like it.
If somebody told you that you were stupid, you would probably get angry, and tell them off. But if you go into agreement with some diagnosis of mental disability, you must have decided “Yes, there’s something wrong with me, it explains why I can’t do things, and I should just give up and take my meds.”
That’s the problem with psychology and psychiatry, they have the basic belief that everyone is mentally ill or disabled, and if you find yourselves in their hands expect to be given a prescription and a gold-plated excuse to not confront something.
This “disabled stuff” is an invitation to curl up and die. Pride in oneself is not a bad thing, it is much more you than humility, self-invalidation and a self-endorsed disability. If you look at life as a game, an adventure, a spiritual quest, you won’t be far wrong.
