Coping Strategies

Differences

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”

Margaret Mead

We are encouraged to believe that we are one of a kind—and unless we are an identical twin, that's true enough. If we apply that to the whole human race, everyone is a unique specimen of humanity. Paradoxically, we also seem to believe that we should all be alike; that there is only one “right” and anything that diverges from it is simply “wrong.” We hold this to be true in many arenas of life—religious, political, domestic and moral.

The past couple of weeks have been a case study in how different folks cope with the same situation in different ways. I've been helping a friend through a very difficult passage. He is enduring the medical treatment for Multiple Myeloma, the last stage of which is killing his bone marrow and then doing a stem-cell transplant. He's quite ill. My way of coping is to work—pick up his mail, water his plants, go to visit at the hospital, wash his laundry, and send updates to his family who live states away. The family's way of dealing with it is to communicate with him by joking around in emails. His way of coping is to try and sleep through the whole thing. Everyone has their own coping strategies and defense mechanisms. Usually, they are learned from family of origin, going back generations. My entire family were workaholics, so it makes sense for me to cope by working. I focus on the deadly seriousness of his illness. He and his family use their life-long, goofing-around way of relating to defend themselves against that. No one is right, or wrong—just different. I wonder what your coping strategies are.

When someone is very different from us, our first response is usually to reject them as bad or wrong-headed. It requires understanding our own differences, and where they came from to stop judging the other, and simply let them be who they are. We may find other ways of living to be irritating, even threatening, and the other person may see us in the same light. The only way to leap the gulf between us is to put aside our idea that there is only one right way, and that way is ours. If I conceive of myself as unique, then I must allow you to be unique too. And, so you are.

                                                          In the Spirit,

                                                              Jane