Barrett Dorko
23-01-2007, 04:51 AM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
Seated on the tarmac after an hour’s delay in Cleveland last Tuesday I heard the flight attendant announce that there was a weight distribution problem on this small plane and they were going to need somebody from my area in the front to move to the back. I was all settled in and comfortable in my single seat, a book open and a red pen poised above it, just in case I needed to mark something memorable.
No one moved, I noticed a few had even stopped breathing and I knew that my comfort wasn’t going to last any longer.
Every time I teach someone will speculate on my motivation. They look at the schedule and realize what a grind this travel must be and imagine how much easier it would be to sit in a clinic, my home and family nearby. “You must love to teach,” they say,” and in response I say very little. Though I am compelled to speak and write regularly about what it is I’ve come to understand about treating a specific and common diagnosis – the abnormal neurodynamic – I rarely if ever feel like I’m actually teaching. If I were I think I’d see some sort of result, some growth. I’d hear from people who had changed and had questions about specific clinical issues. All of this is virtually unheard of in my experience.
I started seeing an image in my head this week. It was one of those “stress” balls you can buy that deforms easily and then rapidly springs back to its original shape. I don’t think anybody buys these things for themselves – they receive them as a gag gift, and a rather pathetic one at that. After all, how much stress is anyone going to relieve accomplishing nothing?
I’ve decided to interpret this recurrent image in this way: therapists appear to learn something and change as long as they are within my grasp, even if it’s just the effect of my voice. But as soon as I relinquish my grip they spring back immediately to their original shape, and that’s why I have no sense of having taught anything.
Ah, but for those few moments on the plane from Cleveland and Chicago I actually began to feel something my, uh, teaching doesn’t produce. I felt useful, special in my own way, and publicly willing to sacrifice my own comfort for the common good. And I could see this effort was having a measurable effect.
After all, the plane didn’t nose dive into Lake Michigan.
And I’m taking credit for that.
Seated on the tarmac after an hour’s delay in Cleveland last Tuesday I heard the flight attendant announce that there was a weight distribution problem on this small plane and they were going to need somebody from my area in the front to move to the back. I was all settled in and comfortable in my single seat, a book open and a red pen poised above it, just in case I needed to mark something memorable.
No one moved, I noticed a few had even stopped breathing and I knew that my comfort wasn’t going to last any longer.
Every time I teach someone will speculate on my motivation. They look at the schedule and realize what a grind this travel must be and imagine how much easier it would be to sit in a clinic, my home and family nearby. “You must love to teach,” they say,” and in response I say very little. Though I am compelled to speak and write regularly about what it is I’ve come to understand about treating a specific and common diagnosis – the abnormal neurodynamic – I rarely if ever feel like I’m actually teaching. If I were I think I’d see some sort of result, some growth. I’d hear from people who had changed and had questions about specific clinical issues. All of this is virtually unheard of in my experience.
I started seeing an image in my head this week. It was one of those “stress” balls you can buy that deforms easily and then rapidly springs back to its original shape. I don’t think anybody buys these things for themselves – they receive them as a gag gift, and a rather pathetic one at that. After all, how much stress is anyone going to relieve accomplishing nothing?
I’ve decided to interpret this recurrent image in this way: therapists appear to learn something and change as long as they are within my grasp, even if it’s just the effect of my voice. But as soon as I relinquish my grip they spring back immediately to their original shape, and that’s why I have no sense of having taught anything.
Ah, but for those few moments on the plane from Cleveland and Chicago I actually began to feel something my, uh, teaching doesn’t produce. I felt useful, special in my own way, and publicly willing to sacrifice my own comfort for the common good. And I could see this effort was having a measurable effect.
After all, the plane didn’t nose dive into Lake Michigan.
And I’m taking credit for that.