(Image: Dark Lolita (Kodona Style), a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion (2.0)
image from chato’s pho­to­stream)

Square Pegs, Round Holes — on Redefin­ing Rela­tion­ships with Our­selves, with Others

Boy, that was a long title.

I worked with a 17 year old young man, who came in with his par­ents. Mom did the ini­tial descrip­tion of his sit­u­a­tion, and he chimed in. I have to tell you, I liked this family.

Which is not to say they agreed with, or were absolutely polite with each other. I saw a free flow of ideas regard­ing the young man’s present state of being. He reported, “I know how to “play the game” at school and in my social life, but I am also feel­ing sad, alone.” His life, in gen­eral, lacked mean­ing. When I asked him to describe his state of mind, he couldn’t, other than to say “I’m sad.”

Mom men­tioned she’d gone through a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence 2 years ago, and also said that she was prone to depres­sion. She was quick, how­ever, to dis­own a genetic link—she was sim­ply mak­ing an obser­va­tion. There was a fair amount of con­ver­sa­tion, back and forth, about mean­ing, about friends, and ulti­mately, about not fit­ting in to the norms of what soci­ety “expects.”

Need­less to say, I could relate.

I tossed out how maybe he was smart enough to allow his true self out— that he didn’t fit in because he chose not to play the game of hid­ing his true self. I men­tioned that not con­form­ing was a dif­fi­cult thing, as much pres­sure is brought to bear on the non-conformist. And I sug­gested that it wasn’t so much that he was dif­fer­ent or unusual—we’re all dif­fer­ent and unusual—but that he was fly­ing in the face of what most peo­ple do with their uniqueness—most peo­ple sim­ply choose to hide it. Most peo­ple con­form to the norms rather than face the strug­gle that being dif­fer­ent can create.

What he was feel­ing, his sense of alien­ation, might be the result of actu­ally being himself.

I sug­gested that he doesn’t fit in—the “square peg, round hole” idea—and mom and dad agreed, and my client smiled and nodded.

I asked him, “Does it some­times seem like too much effort to play the game, when in the end, you don’t know if it’s even worth fit­ting in?” He again nod­ded and said, “I usu­ally fit in because I know how. I’m just not sure, any more, why I’d want to.”

Another client, a 17 year old young woman put it,

“Some­times I real­ize that I am far more mature and respon­si­ble for myself than my friends are. It’s hard out­grow­ing them, but it sure beats hang­ing around and feel­ing miserable.”

Here are a cou­ple of exam­ples of what we live and teach—examples of Open Palm Solutions

We teach peo­ple to have rela­tion­ships in which each per­son acts as a wit­ness for the other.

• This allows the par­tic­i­pants to learn more about them­selves, through dia­logue. There’s no attempt to change the other person.
• There is a lot of curios­ity about each person’s process and world view.
• This is cer­tainly not the “welded together at the hip” descrip­tion of rela­tion­ship that soci­ety bandies about. “I love you because you make me com­plete,” to us, is sim­ply hogwash.

We help oth­ers to under­stand that “I alone am respon­si­ble for me”:

• for my direc­tion, my under­stand­ings, the con­di­tion of my body, the way I live my life, and espe­cially for “what’s hap­pen­ing in my life.”

We believe that any­one can learn:

• to hear the crit­i­cal voices in their head, lis­ten to them with­out judg­ment, give the critic a pat on the bum and send them into the back­ground — as opposed to hav­ing one’s life run by crit­i­cal tapes or voices.

We help the peo­ple who work with us to:

• rec­og­nize that their need for nour­ish­ment, at the soul level, requires of them total hon­esty, (as in shar­ing all that I know about me today, and rec­og­niz­ing I will know other, maybe con­tra­dic­tory stuff, tomorrow),
• choose to share them­selves with oth­ers, deeply, inti­mately, and with excite­ment, despite any fear or being judged or rejected.

We help oth­ers get the idea that:

• others—family, old friends, whomever, might not under­stand their path, but that is a price of walk­ing this path.
• there is no ques­tion that they will hear, “Well, hey guy, just who do you think you are, act­ing that way?” Their response? “I’m me, being me, in rela­tion­ship to me and in open rela­tion­ship with you. Your opin­ion mat­ters to me, because it’s yours, but not as a deter­mi­nant of my choices.”

We want the peo­ple we care about:

• to be end­lessly open to the pos­si­bil­ity of sig­nif­i­cant moments (but not impor­tant ones — see this blog post)
• to actively posi­tion them­selves to meet and bond with and reach out to oth­ers who are on par­al­lel paths—risky, as oth­ers see who they really are.
• to choose to be in such rela­tion­ships any­way, because of the mir­ror held up by friends—this is the mark of a mature sense of true relationship.

We pro­mote avoid­ing excuses:

• “I can’t be inti­mate. I’m a loner” — an excuse to keep you from reveal­ing what you per­ceive to be the “ter­ri­ble truth” about your­self. Fear­ful of inti­mate con­tact, you pull into your­self, hid­ing behind a thin veneer of self– doubt. Instead, we pro­pose tak­ing the risk of intimacy.
• “If peo­ple knew the real me, they’d run” — is sim­ply an excuse to avoid engage­ment, hon­esty, vul­ner­a­bil­ity. We scare our­selves with our own visions of why no one would love us, care about us, respect us. We do such a good job that we never get around to test­ing our the­o­ries with a real per­son. We pro­pose ask­ing for what you want, and see­ing what happens.
• “I’m too busy with my friends to get to know myself” — an excuse to keep so busy that time for reflec­tion is mea­sured in nanosec­onds — an excuse to avoid your own “void” — your fear of death — your fear of actu­ally liv­ing life — your fear of being a “square peg in a round hole.” We pro­pose intro­spec­tion — repeated intro­spec­tion, fol­lowed by shar­ing what you learn with your intimates.

(Image: Fairy, a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion (2.0) image from matchity’s pho­to­stream)

To engage in true rela­tion­ship with your­self and with oth­ers — as you are, with your full skill set and all your warts and foibles show­ing, is the ulti­mate mark of matu­rity. If you chose this path, if you are on this path now, you already do not fit in.

So what? Get over it. Because your life is the only show in town. You’re going to wake up dead one day, and I’d hate for you to have missed liv­ing. Out of fear. Out of dis­trust. Out of reluc­tance. Out of an unwill­ing­ness to chal­lenge and make peace with what scares you.

Hands are reach­ing out to you, right now. You can refuse to talk, you can hide, you can bury your­self in work. Or you can reach out , and reach deep inside, and choose to make con­tact. In the depths and at the bound­aries. Where life is. You won’t “fit in.” But finally, at last, you’ll fit your­self. You’ll be your­self. And that, my friends, is enough.