I have been so happy lately! I just feel so happy! My life is so good. Ever since I quit my last job, I've felt like I've had this burden lifted off me. I used to carry this yucky feeling home from work, and I don't anymore. I just feel so liberated! The last couple months I have often thought, "I just feel so happy! I feel so GOOD!" There are a lot of difficult things about my current jobs as well, but they rarely follow me home. I am so glad I don't work at the P* school anymore. My whole life is better since working there.
I've thought a lot about why I carried this oppressive feeling with me while I worked at the P* school, and I think I'm learning some lessons from it. First of all, I think some of it stemmed from the fact that the people there did not treat me well. That affected me more than I would let myself admit. I tried so hard to be emotionally independent from the way they treated me, and although I stayed so positive in my mind, my heart still felt a little sick from it, and that sick feeling would take a while to wear off after I got home.
I don't want to be around people like that anymore. I want to surround myself with uplifting people, not people who want to drag me down, who want to make me feel "el crapo" (as Chad and I like to say) so as to make themselves feel better.
But I know I can't avoid them completely, and so I'm still trying to figure out how to avoid being affected by them. That's a lesson I think I was supposed to learn from this experience, and I haven't quite figured it out yet. Any thoughts? I tried so hard at work to love the people who treated me like that--to forgive them, to understand them, to pray for them, to not care what they thought, to befriend them. But I still had that sick feeling from the way they treated me, and that feeling still comes to me when I think about working there. I never want to go back there! And I never want to treat people the way they treated me! I want to be a leader that uplifts, inspires, and encourages. I do not want to be a leader that tries to make people fear me and feel like they are SO below me.
The second thing I am learning is that I am believing to a fault. I am so believing! I tried so hard to believe in what I was doing, that the therapy we did there was what was best for the kids, that I was helping them, that my supervisors knew what they were talking about. My mind was in it, but my heart didn't buy it. I felt yucky from trying to believe in something I just couldn't. I feel so liberated now that I don't have to live something I can't believe!
I realize now I used to be really defensive about my work, and I feel bad about it. I couldn't handle any comments that were even slightly negative about it, because I was trying so hard to believe in it and be positive about it. I'm learning first-hand that if you have a firm foundation and firm belief in something, you can handle criticism. But without it, you fear that your belief will crumble with the slightest negativity, so you have to fight it off so you can keep believing in it. I don't want to be defensive and combative. I want to be open to feedback, even if it's not all positive. And I don't want to be so believing that I force myself into trying to believe things that are untrue.
I think Chad and I complement each other very well, because I am so believing and Chad is quite skeptical. He is good to encourage me to question things more, and I am good to encourage him to be more believing. Perhaps we'll help each other come to a good, safe, healthy middle ground.
I hope that I can learn whatever I was supposed to learn through that job, because it was a crummy thing to go through for nothing. But I know there are two very positive things that job has led me to regardless of how much I learned from it:
1. Working with the kids with autism I work with now, and learning about the therapy I am using now!
2. And helping me feel as happy as I am now that I am not working there anymore!
