the perpetual validation of our existence

there's an episode of parks and rec that ann perkins is super preggo in, and chris trager keeps trying to offer solutions, and it just makes ann more frustrated. someone (prob donna) finally tells him not to give her advice, and not to try and fix things for ann, but just to say "that sucks..." when she vents about how crappy she feels. i wish everyone understood how much more helpful it is just to acknowledge someone's pain/frustration/anger and joy/happiness too. i hear interactions all the time where a person, even with the best of intentions, invalidates someone's feelings. while none of us should constantly require validation outside ourselves, we also don't need our feelings to be minimized or dismissed or treated as though there's a simple solution if we could just get over said feelings. how we feel may be temporary, but being supportive includes acknowledging what someone is dealing with, and then maybe asking if there's anything we can do to help (if we are in a position to do so). each of us is responsible for our own happiness, working out our own solutions, etc. but venting is a healthy part of owning our feelings and not being ashamed of what we're experiencing, and no one thrives alone or by keeping everything they feel bottled up. imagine how much easier it would be to work through challenges if our emotions weren't treated like they should be different or don't matter! just a friendly psa from a first-year counselor. ❤

..........i posted this on fb earlier tonight. it was a tangent of an emotional response i had when a good friend of mine (not the first), had made me feel i was whining about something trivial in venting about my dealing with my recent lyme disease diagnosis. i knew lyme wasn't THAT big of a deal, but it was something that gad altered my life, caused me to reassess things about my body, and had generally provoked the stress already building up from the course of the past couple months. in my efforts not to make a mountain out of a mole-hill, i made this post, to expand upon what had upset me at the root (the dismissal of my frustration--or what felt like it), i wrote this post, and then felt bad that i had been passive. and then just felt like maybe there was no sense in expressing anything since everything can be misunderstood or misinterpreted.

i was talking about the importance of language with a client. about how we need to think before we speak, and how even professionals, who should be aware of it, don't consider their use of language from the perspective of the client.

later i was talking to matt about derridas, and the arbitrary nature of words, how these strings of signifiers still fail somehow to resolve anything...

then i came across this beautiful excerpt from bell hooks that another friend posted, but forgot to copy and paste it someplace, so I've lost it until I find it again.