I tend to arrive to the hospital around 730am each morning to have time to answer phone calls, emails, and check in with my fellow therapists before beginning the day. Sometimes we talk about our lives and sometimes we are putting out fires the patients have proverbially set already that day. Today I was listening to one of my coworker's political rants.
This particular coworker tends to take small amounts of information to feel fully informed, and promptly steps up on his soapbox and rant. I find this completely annoying, to say the least. Today's tirade was about 30 minutes he had watched of a documentary about "Freakonomics." Apparently this is a book put together by an author and economist, which, more succinctly than he put it, is about correlation not equaling causation. Any good grad student knows this rule since the beginning of their first statistics class. My coworker was convinced it meant that just because we think crime decreases with the increasing number of police officers, doesn't mean that the reality isn't that there were just fewer criminals born because abortion was legalized twenty years before. (Don't worry; the silliness of this bold opinion is where I am going with this.)
I have another coworker who firmly believes that (in my words, not hers) the more you enable a patient, the more you are helping them. This is a bit harsh to say in contrast to the goodness of her intentions, but it is accurate also serves to illustrate my point. Both coworkers are completely closed to any sort of outside opinion or feedback. Both workers are convinced and convicted that they are completely and entirely correct in their positions. I actually see this equally in my patients all the time. They are living on the street, homeless, and without any major support of any kind, but cannot seem to see any explanation to their situation other than they were treated unfairly.
There is something to be said for feeling passionately about something. There is something to be said for feeling strongly about and defending your viewpoint or even your worldview. However, I firmly believe, if you aren't at least willing to listen to AND consider other perspectives, you will remain stuck and enclosed in one point of view. We see this in the adamant political fool, the too-tenderhearted therapist, the victim of circumstance patient, and many others. Doctors, lawyers, professors, therapists, children, parents and all of us can fall into the trap of being too stuck on the defense to accept that someone else might feel adamantly different for another completely valid and good reason.
It fascinates me that anyone (but so many people!) can be so sure that they've got it right, that they assume that any digression from their theory is wrong. All or nothing thinking, as my therapist frequently accuses me of. For those of you not entrenched in psychobabble like us mental health professionals, we call this a cognitive distortion, or "stinkin thinkin." It is a maladaptive thought pattern that leads us around in circles, or towards bad decisions and bad emotions.
Bottom line, whether or not you are one hundred percent correct and everyone else is wrong, that the earth does revolve around the sun, perhaps that crazy woman in the corner may also be right when she mumbles that the sun is just a star. Even if she is not, could we not open our minds to more possibilities by at least considering it? After all, Charlie Brown couldn't have always been the victim; he must have been an !@#*%$$!! to somebody.
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