Hi. Beagley. Thanks for posting. I get exactly what your saying. I think the DB view is that if EXW decides she wants to work on an R ,she would have to commit 110%. My EXW has talked of coming home , she does not blame me for M breakdown and says she didn't reject me but our life. She has spoken about herself being in an MLC or maybe having a breakdown. All of this could be taken as EXW trying to open doors or making overtures to work on R but if you step back , she isn't doing anything other than talking. And talk is cheap. Actions are where it's at.
The lighthouse story really says to me that we have to be a guiding light but not the rescue team.
Just my take Beagley.
Take care. Rd
Can't let this go, I'm like a dog with a bone sometimes. :-)
There's lots of talk of validation, I think of it more as empathy. If you take it slightly beyond the guidelines that are on the validation cheat sheet, is asking questions like, "so you don't feel good about where you are heading, which must be hard for you, what do you think you can do about it to make things better?" or, "if you had a magic wand what would you do?" and whatever the response we say "and how could you go about making that happen?" acceptable? So it's sort of validation with a counsellor twist, is that stepping beyond where we believe we should be treading? What we have to guard against is being too directive or slipping into what appears to be neediness, which we all know is not good.
Is this remaining as the lighthouse and using your beam to guide your WS along a safe path, so sort of rescue team, but not hands on? We think our doors are left open a crack and the road is smooth, when you are in a fog (as our WS's are) sometimes you can't see the road ahead of you, let alone know where you are going, so we make our lighthouse beams lilluminate a way forward form them as well as a comforting and reassuring glow.
When I started on this BB my concern was that there was seemingly acceptance that D was an inevitability and that DB'ing was not being fully applied all of the time. Maybe what I was sensing was that there's an under current that means we end up being almost drill sergeant like in our approach, nothing's good enough from our WS except if it as you said above their effort is 110%!! Isn't this a bit macho (not surprising as there are a lot of men on here) and so we are missing possible opportunities? The machoism being routed in the fear that if we make a wrong move we might ruin things completely. As MWD says in the books, try something and if it's doesn't work, back pedal and try something else plus everything she said was guidance not hard and fast rules.
Maybe I am stepping out of line here, or using too much hyperbole, or as I suspect descending into jibberish, so I'll stop now.
- Nobody has ever learnt anything important from happiness and success; problems make us grow - Consult your plan, not your feelings - If you haven't set goals, how can you expect to achieve anything?
