The Courage to Choose Well

Listen, if you don't do it because you're scared, that's your choice. You are an adult with the right to self-determination.

If you don't do it because you're scared and there are children depending on you to do it - well that's another matter entirely.

Whatever you do, don't say you can't - because that's just not true.

Accurate Appraisal of our Skills

Sometimes we have skills and don't know it. We underestimate what we know and can do, leaving us feeling insecure.

Sometimes we don't have the skills and don't know it!

An excellent teacher I know and love sent an article to me that I thought you might enjoy, here is the abstract:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
Justin Kruger and David Dunning, Cornell University

"People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities."

So if we leave a Professional Development thinking, "Wow, I didn't know as much as I thought I did," then our metacognitive competence is improving!

Love this quote from the article:
"It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense. (Miller, 1993, p. 4)"

There is no cost to not knowing if we are willing to ask for help or consultation. There is a cost to not knowing and not asking for help/consultation. Besides our own, who else's opportunities are we limiting when we don't know that we don't know?

Education does not make us educable. It is our awareness of being unfinished that makes us educable.
-Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

Are you learning with a beginner's mind (open and curious) or do you already know it all?

Reflection Questions

Do we feel sorry for and try to rescue our clients/others? What is our story? Do we see our past selves as helpless victims in need of rescuing? Do we then proceed to see our clients as such?

Do we believe in our client's/others inherent capacity and natural thrust to grow and develop? Do we hold high expectations that they can accomplish their goals with our support? Si Se Puede and Yes We Can.

Are we enabling or empowering? What is the difference? What do these concepts mean in terms of what we do with and say to clients?

If we take a look at what we are doing - are we colluding with clients or being honest and courageous, and ultimately, loving?

If clients or friends come to us with the core belief, "I am incompetent" - do we agree with them and proceed to try to rescue or save?

My 2nd year MSW field instructor, Elizabeth, taught us that rescuing only leads to resentment for both rescuer and rescuee. The rescuer grows weary of the one-way giving, giving, giving (burnout, compassion fatigue, etc.). And the rescuee tires of feeling infantilized/babied or being rescued (I can do it myself! Don't you believe that I can do it myself? Do you think that you are better than me because you do it for me?). She talked about taking a stance of not rescuing with a vengeance as a counterpoint to the longstanding urge.


If we were parentified children, then do we continue this pattern into adulthood? Do we take on inordinate amounts of responsibility whenever there is an absence of leadership? In childhood this meant survival. In adulthood, what does this mean and do to our bodies/selves? If we let the system fail, would that usher in a transformation of the system? Are we enabling a dysfunctional system that needs to die/fail and change? Why do we insist on plugging up the damn with our own thumb? Why do we insist on carrying the world on our shoulders? No wonder our shoulders hurt. Why is taking care of ourselves and doing our part not enough? If we did this, would this leave some space for others to step in and do more? Would this allow an opening for more of us to feel the pride of achievement and contribution?

Do past experiences with our own parents color our expectations about whether our clients parents will care, pull through, participate in treatment, take responsibility and claim their child? Do we make assumptions about parents before picking up the phone to give them a chance? How do we approach parents? Is it engaging? insecure? hopeful? blaming? avoidant?

If we say we value the strengths perspective, then how many minutes or what percentage of time during any client interview do we spend talking about strengths (vs. pathology and symptoms)? 1 minute? 5 minutes? 30 minutes? 10%? 50%? 75%?

Mindsight with Dan Siegel, Part 5: Empathy

"Equanimity & Equilibrium = managing all affective states, flexible flow."
--what a pretty little pearl from Dan

"Attachment is only part of the story. Genetic vulnerability is linked bipolar disorder. It is possible to make sense of your life after the first born child."
--Do mothers get closer by the 5th or 6th child?

"Intimate relationship is rewarding. Regulating emotions in a balanced way is related to maximum intellectual potential. "
--No wonder Second Step, teaching social-emotional skills in the classroom, leads to increased school-wide test scores in addition to decreased discipline referrals.

"Observation of parent-child interaction = 45% attachment prediction.
Coherent narrative = 85% attachment prediction.
We don't know the impact of the coherent narrative. What is the transmission agent?"

"Truths exist not established by science yet."
--Can't wait until it is proven that walking around barefoot in the house during winter or going out in the cold with your hair wet leads to colds or flus. Germ theory is limited and doesn't explain the whole story! Pardon my tangent, let's continue...

"Dan's opinion about the transmission agent: It is mindsight, metacognition, menalization. Do you see the internal world? To achieve level of neural integration, parents need a mindsight lens to allow differentiation of child's internal life."

"Integration explains gap in transmission agent. Child feels felt."
--this reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching to ask your loved one (I asked my daughter), "Darling, do I understand you enough?" I started asking two summers ago and her answer was a quick and resolute, "No." The follow up question, "Am I making you suffer?" yields an equally terse, "yes." Then, "I don't want to make you suffer, and if I do so because of my ignorance, please tell me so that I can love you better, how can I love you better?" This of course elicited a laundry list of complaints that I can actually hear because I am an adult, they are child-specific concerns, I really do want to know, and I love her. I ask these questions regularly (but not too often because she finds repetitive questions annoying) and now she answers in softer tones. The other day, in the car on the drive home from school, I was very proud of the tender, "maybe" response to my "Darling, do I understand you enough?"

"Resilience is nurtured/achieved by one relationship with a teacher, neighbor, religious leader or parent. Internal world seen by/feeling felt was the source of resilience. Mindsight teaching is a source of resilience."

"Child experiences empathic attunement. How do you scientifically measure internal world? Neural integration is at the heart of children who thrive."

"Rudder's 10,000 hours study: Two schools, two headmasters. One school doing well, one not. Switched headmaster. School previously not doing well is now doing well. One headmaster allowed teachers to use individual approach and took teacher opinions into account. Then teachers, in turn, empowered students."

"When a leader inspires integration, there is a possibility to make healthier systems."

"All levels of systems: individual, family, school, community, society, world."

Sculpture Garden on a Sunny Winter Morning (and late for class)

First Year, Second Quarter, End of Week 8

Statistics - We are deep into multiple regressions with quantitative variables, categorical variables and interaction terms. Two more homework assignments and a take-home final. Thank goodness for a good textbook, weekly homework to keep me on task, Dr. Bridget Freisthler offering stats support, and good ol' Yool, our TA, and his homework review in lab.

Intervention Research - a lit review and two designs (randomized control trial and quasi-experimental design) addressing relevant internal and external validity threats and some other stuff. I will get to writing this paper very soon. It is marinating in my head, sort of.

Policy - Two written assignments about a social problem (I chose the achievement gap and education reform) under my belt. Now I am looking forward to a policy analysis paper and preparing for a debate about the pros and cons of entitlement reform. In the debate we are to: define the problem, develop two macro questions, argue the position from a rational approach avoiding value statements, create a schematic diagram and make 30-40 year predictions.

My daughter (8 years old) wants to be on the swim team. I take her to classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is cold outside but the water is warm. She looks so happy and confident in the water. It makes it so worth it to sit and shiver on the metal bleachers trying to study.

At work, a team of us submitted two federal proposals to develop multi-tiered school social work services at three elementary schools and two middle schools in South LA - two million dollars over three years and six school social workers. What a difference that will make.

Last Friday, I presented at a UCLA Resiliency Symposium about my experiences with universal screening and trauma-informed/trauma-specific evidence-based group interventions at South LA's Harmony ES. On the drive over, I wondered: Why do I get myself into these fixes? I was very intimidated by the line up of presenters (psychiatrists, researchers, clinical scholars, etc.). I made a valiant effort not to cry when talking about working with students and their parents - trying to offer alternatives to avoidant coping by facilitating their communication, attunement and connection. I got through it and received positive feedback from audience members and other presenters. A RAND researcher said my stories made him want to go back to school to become a school social worker! He was being nice I am sure, but I'll take it.

No wonder I need self-care. Things are scheduled - hair color, massages (yes, plural!), tennis on Tuesdays. I am also setting limits.

Good night, it's time for milk and girl scout cookies. Oh yea, my daughter sold 74 boxes and we're nearly done with deliveries. Whew. Thank you, Yesus.

Mindsight with Dan Siegel, Part 4: Integration

"What is emotion? Energy in motion. Emotion has no shared meaning! There is no common definition. Emotion links the body to the brain (neuroscientist definition). Emotion also links people in groups and people across generations."

"Linkage of different elements = Integration. Linkage of differentiated parts."

"Emotional distress = not linking; stuck & stagnant (rigidity); chaotic, unpredictable and random behavior; or both chaos and rigidity."

"Complexity. Complex system is flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable."

"Self-organization moves toward maximizing complexity."

"The example of a human chorus:
1) all singing one note together = linkage without differentiation (monotony)
2) all singing own song = chaos, differentiation
3) all singing same song = integration, flexible, adaptive, coherent, linking differentiated parts leads to a feeling of harmony, integration and well-being."

"Promote integration in self, family and community. Shape internal world toward integration."

"Chaos or rigidity (in self, family or community) = integration impaired; information/energy flow is stuck; where is differentiation needed?; promote linkage."

"Focus flow of energy and information to catalyze integration."

"mindgains.org - organizational consultation and explains the science of integration."