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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 3 of 3. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by muffled on October 9, 2005, at 17:59:08
This is gonna sound stupid I know it. But I'm serious. How can I say it better. Its only dawned on me recently, that I WANT TO BE BAD. I want to be good too. I just thought I was bad cuz it was in me or something. I somehow had no control or something. I really don't want to be bad, but I must want to be or I wouldn't be? I'm quite confused by this. Any ideas. Sorry if this is dumb. better me than you eh.
Muffled
Posted by Tamar on October 9, 2005, at 20:12:44
In reply to I WANT to be good. I WANT to be bad????, posted by muffled on October 9, 2005, at 17:59:08
> This is gonna sound stupid I know it. But I'm serious. How can I say it better. Its only dawned on me recently, that I WANT TO BE BAD. I want to be good too. I just thought I was bad cuz it was in me or something. I somehow had no control or something. I really don't want to be bad, but I must want to be or I wouldn't be? I'm quite confused by this. Any ideas. Sorry if this is dumb. better me than you eh.
> MuffledThis doesn’t sound stupid at all. Doesn’t everybody struggle with this? Well… everybody with a conscience, anyway…
I want to be bad too. Sometimes I am bad. But I also want to be good, and sometimes I manage it.
I think the important thing is accepting that we all have aspects of ourselves that aren’t perfect. Anyone can be jealous or impatient or lazy or foolish or irritable or selfish, or whatever. Sometimes it’s important to recognise when our behaviour doesn’t meet the standards we’d like to have for ourselves, and at the same time not be too hard on ourselves.
I remember telling my therapist once that I really wanted to shout at my boss. And he said, “Why can’t you?” And I was amazed: it sounded like he was almost giving me permission to be rude to my boss. And then I thought… yeah, it’s not actually the end of the world to shout at my boss. She wouldn’t like it much, but I’d feel so much better. I haven’t shouted at her yet, but one day, perhaps I will… Sometimes I think she really deserves it. It might not be good and it might not be politically useful, but if I’m sometimes bad, I’m not actually inherently evil.
Just my two cents.
Tamar
Posted by pegasus on October 10, 2005, at 10:15:55
In reply to I WANT to be good. I WANT to be bad????, posted by muffled on October 9, 2005, at 17:59:08
Oh, yeah, isn't this so painful to work out? In my opinion, we all have times that we want to be bad, because there is something appealing - and probably *good* - that we get out of being bad at those times. So, it's not just that there is this badness coming out of us in an arbitrary way. It's that we have something to gain, or something we need about being bad sometimes, so of course it becomes appealing.
Here's an example: Whenever I say anything to my mom about any negative experience from my childhood, my mom goes into hysterics about how I'm saying she's a bad mother, and how can I do that to her, etc. So, she's behaving "badly". But what she gets out of it is that she doesn't have to face any hard truth about my childhood, which might actually be more deeply painful to her than the surface "hurt" of feeling insulted by my comments. Does that make sense? She's choosing to behave in a hysterical manner, sure, but she does it (unconsciously) to protect herself. Which isn't inherently a bad thing, right? Although I sure wish she had the strength to actually talk about the way things really were.
peg
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