Interdisciplinary Psychology:

Reflections on the EMP field Trip

I had a blast on our field trip. The first thing that I really enjoyed was connecting with Sue-Marie on the car ride to Seattle. Despite it still being early morning, we spontaneously slipped into a very authentic disclosure of our lives and our dreams for the future. This started things out on a great note.

When we first got to the museum I had a lot of fun snapping pictures of Delwin, Walter and John. I also enjoyed our tour guide Juan’s cordial group introduction to EMP.

As I live my life today there is no person in my life who I need to engage in the forgiveness activity. For this reason I will share how this process relates to forgiveness I have found for my father. I went through this process as a necessary part of my recovery from substance abuse.

1)     The hurt I felt from my father was wondering why he could not express love on a consistent basis. As a child I took this to be a sign of my unworthiness to be loved. I also felt anger at the way he treated my mother. I also felt fear of the unknown as I struggled for a feeling of security that never emerged. There were many times I was angry and lashed out because of his intoxication and ambivalence of the feelings of his family.

1)The Uncovering Phase: For this activity I chose a man I used to work for. I worked for him as a roofer/foreman for five years. We had started a roof replacement on a one story rambler. The plan was to tear it off put new paper on one day and put new shingles on the next. Everything went well the first day but that night it snowed. To make matters worse a leak had developed in one of the valleys. I got the crew to agree to roof over to the valley so that the leak would stop. As we were finishing about noon cold and fairly miserable the boss pulled up. When I told him that we were going home he lost it. He started yelling for us to get back on the roof at some point the grabbed me by the throat. Then he told us to get back on the roof and left. Everyone else went back to work I did not. I left and never worked for him again. He did not really hurt me but I felt very embarrassed and mad that he could treat me like that in front of my crew and my feeling were hurt.

    When confronted with this assignment I was very confused as to where to start and who to forgive. I realized that I have tendency to just “lose touch” with people when they upset me instead of actually confronting them and telling them the problems that I’ve been having with our relationship. I’m an avoider, big time. I let things build up to a point where I’m just too frustrated to even consider talking to the person who I feel has offended me.
     I eventually chose to “forgive” someone who I had dated for three years and lived with for two because it seemed to be the easiest of the bunch . When I had left New York four years ago to relocate to Seattle, I had hoped he would come with me, but our relationship was waning and he decided to stay in New York. We remained close friends for a while once I arrived in Seattle, talking on the phone at least once a week. He even came out to visit after I had been here for a year. But underneath the friendly exterior, I was still pretty angry at him for being able to decide so readily to end our relationship and stay in NY. I was even angrier that he had made some of the changes in his life that I had wanted to see when we were together.
    This exercise made me realize quite a few things about this particular situation. I was able to recall that I was his first serious girlfriend and real relationship. I had been lucky enough to had been in a wonderful relationship when I was in my teens/early twenties but not many people could say the same. I remembered breaking up with my first boyfriend because I wanted to date other people and could not so easily commit to someone at such a young age. Despite the fact that Joe (not his real name) was already in his thirties, he had yet to “sow his wild oats” so to speak. I also realized that this took place right after my father died and I was desiring tremendous change in my life. Joe was content in NY and had never wanted to leave as badly as I did. He liked being near his family and had a much greater love for the city than I. For numerous reasons, our relationship had been deteriorating. Would I have moved if the situation were reversed? Probably not.
    I was then able to recall a time when I had been forgiven and how great I had felt. I had broken up with my high school boyfriend, Andy, in college because I wanted to date other guys while we were apart. I quickly realized what a mistake I had made and the next summer, got in touch with him and literally begged for his forgiveness. He readily took me back and rarely reminded me of the incident. I remember feeling redeemed and thankful. I had been so sad and remorseful but all it took was his forgiveness to make everything all right again.