Your Stuff, My Stuff

Have you ever felt like you were damned if you do and damned if you don't?

I think one of the worst situations I experienced occured five years ago when I was student teaching. The teacher I was working with seemed very kind and gentle at first but ended up being rather passive aggressive. When it was time for her to send in my first evaluation, she brought it to me in the middle of third period, interrupted me in front of the kids, to get me to sign it. I looked down, read my scores and was shocked! I was doing what I know now to be a great job, but I wasn't teaching her way. She had a bone to pick with the education department at the local university, and she put a lot of pressure on me to conform to her ways and not the ways I was being evaluated by the college. I was basically in a no win scenario. If I pleased her I displeased the university and vice versa. The approval seeker inside of me was in total turmoil the whole 8 weeks.

That lukewarm evaluation shook me. I was used to being the top of the class and making straight A's. It was all I could do to not cry right there in front of the 8th graders, but I had to teach on and that is what I did.

One of the ridiculous things she criticized me for was my physical management of the classroom area - where you position yourself, where the desks are , etc. Now, I found that rather confusing since I had changed nothing when I took over. I figured it worked fine and the kids resent too much change, so what I could leave alone, I did. After the evaluation I decided I had better change some things around, so I split some tables apart and combined some others. Two weeks later she returned to join me in the classroom. As I traveled down the hall that morning, I heard this loud "bam, bam, scrape, bam." There she was slamming the tables right back where they had been when she let me have the classroom, right in the exact same places which had merited me a less than average mark!

How I wish I knew then what I know now. I so worried about pleasing everyone and had no possible way of accomplishing it.

Now, I know to categorize such situations into "my stuff" and "their stuff." When people respond or react to me in what seems irrational or undeserved ways, I tended/tend to take it very personally and believe what I have believed in the past with abuse issues: "Something is wrong with me."

Now when someone treats me in a way that feels painful, embarrassing, or just flat wrong, I accept what is mine but leave them with what is theirs.

Take me for example: As a teacher, I have good days and bad days. The kids are usually pretty even, and most days I can handle 105 middle school kids pretty well without losing my cool. However, occasionally, I get irritable and grumpy. I may snap at the kids or jump on the whole class, but it has little if anything to do with the kids and everything to do with me.

So now when someone handles me poorly, I first think about what is mine and own it. Then I take the rest of it and mentally give it back to them. Their anger or rudeness or passive aggressive behavior is about them - not me.

This has proven an amazing way to free myself from that driving need of approval I have carried. It is seldom what others do that determines our behavior but what is inside of us. When you can turn that around and realize someone's tone of voice or attitude toward you is about them and not you, it decreases their power over you and allows you to move on to the rest of your day.

Di