{"id":40581,"date":"2017-03-07T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T10:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/nolongerquivering\/?p=40581"},"modified":"2017-03-06T13:52:06","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T17:52:06","slug":"cognitive-biases-hit-close-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/nolongerquivering\/2017\/03\/cognitive-biases-hit-close-home\/","title":{"rendered":"When Cognitive Biases Hit Too Close To Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\"CB<\/a>by Cindy Kunsman cross posted from her blog Under Much Grace<\/a><\/strong><\/i><\/div>\n
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Just a reminder that the purpose of this discussion aims at stimulating thought and self awareness as tools<\/a> to help those in recovery from trauma<\/a> learn how to make safer choices<\/a>. To make the discussion more jocular, we\u2019ve defined Cognitive Biases as \u201cCranioRectal Inversions<\/a>\u201d (CRI).<\/i><\/div>\n
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All images by Cindy Kunsman and Under Much Grace and used with permission.<\/em><\/div>\n
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We don\u2019t come with a user\u2019s manual for our parents when we\u2019re born, and no one gives us one when we head towards adulthood. We are human, and as the old slogan goes, \u201cChildren learn what they live.<\/i><\/div>\n

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I can see where I\u2019ve made nearly every one of these errors in judgement at one time or another, and I ventured into this topic as a growth experience for myself. Like every other creature on the planet, I fall into predictable patterns of behavior, and I\u2019m blind to some of them. Always remember that the most amazing thing that our minds do involved avoiding painful truth, but sometimes if we dare stare into the abyss of what we think that we can\u2019t see, we see how self-destructive we become in our blindness.<\/div>\n
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The term \u2018self-destructive\u2019 brings to my mind the more obvious behaviors like gambling and drinking. Drug abuse or self-injury come to mind next, as they directly and literally destroy the body in an attempt to numb the soul\u2019s pain. But in considering my own most common Cranio-Rectal Inversions, they\u2019re not ones that I like to think of as self-destructive\u2026.but they are perhaps the most dangerous of all for me.<\/div>\n
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Learning<\/b><\/div>\n
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I am careful about what I blog about, particularly when it comes to personal information that involves other people in my life. A few years ago, I sent something I\u2019d written to several mothers, because I\u2019d written about how difficult it was for me to forgive my parents for a devastating exchange we\u2019d had \u2014 that was not forgivable. I did forgive by releasing them from the debt I felt that they owed me for the hurt they\u2019d caused, but they make the mistake of considering forgiveness and reconciliation to be the same thing. I could move on from that painful moment of the way that they define me, but I couldn\u2019t continue to repeat and repeat the sentiment in word and deed. And they just were not willing to do so. The way they defined themselves became the way that they defined me, and it set my most common cognitive biases in stone in my mind.<\/div>\n
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Over the past year or so, I ventured into a new challenge of a similar set of circumstances outside of my family. I\u2019ve never faced these things in a workplace because of the operating procedures and clear cut chain of command that provided protective structure for me. Interpersonal relationships aren\u2019t governed by such structure unless we create it through boundaries. Needless to say, having faced these hard patterns of behavior with family, resolving to abandon the self-destructive biases which harmed me and those who love me, that resolve would again be tested.<\/div>\n
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Part of me felt that I\u2019d never really made any healing, maturing progress at all, but I know to question any statement of \u2018always\u2019 or \u2018never.\u2019 I had to grow beyond the path of least resistance while honoring my limitations by coming to terms with how I learned to behave \u2013 as if this were the next graduate level course that I didn\u2019t know I\u2019d enrolled in. I had to figure out how to make that new information work in a broader situation. How could I do that while committed to the high road<\/a>?<\/div>\n
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Painful Grieving<\/b><\/div>\n
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I almost laughed one day when a friend of mine said that it was obvious that I always thought about what I said. I only wish that it were true. Maybe I am with some things, and my own biases have much to do with that. I can also talk to a friend about what I did and didn\u2019t do right or wrong as I walked out this new part of my journey of letting go of people and events that were impossible. Because of my own biases, I didn\u2019t want to let go of the situations as they were, but while in the throes of the pain of it all, I didn\u2019t want to blog about something so fresh. I needed to weather some of the grief so that I could look my own biases head on to see how self-destructive they were for me all along.<\/div>\n
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\"Instrusion<\/a><\/div>\n
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So I hope to pick up where I left off so many months ago, not only to work on the Redeeming Dinah<\/a> blog, but also to grieve.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not sure if I fell back into a cycle of hopefully healthy constriction<\/a>, though it\u2019s lasted a bit longer than I would like to admit.<\/p>\n

An acquaintance who I consider a friend who considered my husband and me to be like second parents committed suicide this past year. I was thinking of her as I was traveling and bought her a gift, but while sitting up all night in an airport, spotty internet made it hard to contact her. I returned home and slept nearly all day to be awakened by a phone call that she\u2019d taken her life, right about the time that I was collecting my luggage.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, my sixteen year old cat died, and I have lived without a cat for the first time since I was two years old. It\u2019s strange to me how one experience gets wrapped around another for me. (I don\u2019t know if that happens to other people like it does for me.) I had to move on from people and endeavors and hopes and joy with them because either they couldn\u2019t come with me, or I couldn\u2019t continue to follow along with them. I decided that writing on a blog about such precious things while brokenhearted was not wise. It comes with risk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Getting Things Right<\/b><\/div>\n
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That phrase of \u2018getting it right\u2019 has echoed through my heart and mind my whole life. Firstborn and only children get drilled with this idea as they\u2019re growing up, as their parents learn along with them about how to develop reasonable expectations in life. As an imperfect person in an imperfect world, I had to make peace with the idea that it\u2019s a virtue to seek perfection, but I didn\u2019t know how to temper my expectations. We can perfect our skills which improve our ability to \u2018get it right,\u2019 but I learned that this was also possible within relationships, too.<\/div>\n
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I don\u2019t know that I get anything right, and relationships are so dynamic and changing that setting such an expectation does become self-destructive. But my own biases make letting go of this expectation so difficult. And letting go brings grief for what was hoped for but cannot be.<\/p>\n

But in the spirit of getting this Cognitive Bias business right, so much as a novice can do, I wanted to wait. They are just ideas about what I see as I move along on my journey of life, trying to live fully and love tenderly. Love requires vulnerability, and vulnerability involves risk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For Further Reading:<\/b><\/i><\/div>\n