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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 4 of 4. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Racer on July 25, 2001, at 21:34:11
Hi. I'm really feeling incompetant right now. Any help is appreciated.
New job, teaching riding lessons. New barn, they've no experience with me beyond what they're seeing now. I'm older than most of the instructors, by about twenty years, and fatter by about 50 pounds. Because this is an expensive area, and because horses are expensive anyway, a lot of the other instructors are in their late teens/early 20s, from affluent families, attend college without working, and have had tons of expensive riding lessons for years. At the risk of sounding like a nut case {lol}, you just know they were all cheerleaders!
Anyway, I feel as though they're all judging me and finding me lacking. Now I'm worried that I'll be fired immediately. Right now, it's summer camp season, so we have really difficult conditions, with eight horses in a small ring at one time, half an hour per child to teach, and only two horses at a time can be on lunge lines. (A lunge line is about 15 feet long and allows an instructor to control a horse circling around them. We use it to control the horse and watch the rider while they learn something new.) Since I have only a minute or two at a time to use the lunge, and since I'm not one of the "popular" ones with the instructors and seem to get the last shot at the lunge and immediately have the 'head' instructor telling me to give the lunge to someone else, the kids I'm teaching are the slowest to learn in the whole group. Some of it may be them, since they seem to be particularly clumsy (even on the ground), and they're also more frightened by horses than most of the others, but I know some of it is me. I am getting into one of those cycles where my insecurity is making it harder and harder for me to do anything like a good job, and so I'm doing a worse and worse job, and my insecurities are getting worse because I'm doing a worse job, and then my depression starts breaking through the drugs again -- worse than ever! Today is the first time in months now that I've felt as though life is just impossible and death is really the best for all around me. I need to figure out a way to get past this.
I don't know if I'm venting, or if I'm hoping for advice, or what. This is so hard for me, because compared to these cute, thin, athletic girls with their confidence, I feel hideous. I look at them, and somewhere inside I realize that they don't have my experience, they don't have whatever it is inside me that has kept me alive when the despair was so great, that their parents bought their nice cars so they don't understand why someone like me would drive a ten year old Toyota without complaining. Still, inside me there's a hideous teenager, with a gawky body, a face she hasn't grown into yet, no confidence, and raging insecurities who's screaming and crying and wanting to run away! And the worst of it is that this is really the one thing I know I'm good at! Admittedly, the circumstances are not comfortable for me. In the past, I've always been the sole instructor in the ring, with no more than six riders at any given time, and abundant time to teach individual riders on the lunge line if I need to. This way of doing things is different for me, and not comfortable. I'm constantly feeling judged by the other instructors, most of whom have never taught anywhere else, nor any other way. Judged, and, of course, found lacking.
So, anything from anyone about anything?
Thanks for letting me say it all.
Posted by kazoo on July 25, 2001, at 21:51:16
In reply to Misery, insecurity, the inner 13 year old -- HELP!, posted by Racer on July 25, 2001, at 21:34:11
> Hi. I'm really feeling incompetant right now ...
^^^^^^^^
Stop it!
With age comes wisdom and EXPERIENCE!
You are in a unique teaching position that is a two-fold proposition: (1) to your clients, and (2) to the younger teachers.
The younger teachers will LOOK UP TO YOU and learn from you ... and you can learn from them. Everybody benefits.
So show them what you can do, and bask in the accolades that will follow. How lucky can you get?
kazoo
Posted by shelliR on July 25, 2001, at 23:57:58
In reply to Misery, insecurity, the inner 13 year old -- HELP!, posted by Racer on July 25, 2001, at 21:34:11
Hi Racer,You're in a really difficult situation. You are never going to be a cute, thin, confident athletic girl, "girl" being the operative word. (Sorry.) So you have to stop even thinking of this as a competitive situation. I know what it's like to feel self-conscious in a situation and then absolutely nothing feels right; it's horrible.
In the short run, you might try letting your bad thoughts float out, instead of grabbing them when they enter your brain. In my worst times, I have sat down and written a list of all the people who have loved me. Somehow seeing it in list form helps me. (you might also write a list of all the people who you can remember that you made excellent riders.)
Are you in therapy? One of the ways to move foward is to rid yourself of the shame that you felt (and still feel) about your thirteen year old self. Sometimes I'll think of something that made me feel shame and still does in looking back on it. But it's generally something not very awful and I *know* that intellectually. But I have the hardest time telling my therapist about it--I absolutely don't want to. But when I do tell her (it's like jumping off the high dive for the words to come out)--just saying it outloud makes me realize that it really is a silly or minor past thing. And for some reason, in the telling, the shame goes away. Maybe it leaves the thirteen year me and gets reprocessed in the forty-something year old me and it doesn't feel like shame any more. And it's not hard to say out loud to anyone after that.If nothing I said is helpful, at least my thoughts are with you, and remember all these "perfect" girls will go back to school in another month.
Good luck,
Shelli
Posted by sar on July 26, 2001, at 3:57:56
In reply to Re: Misery, insecurity, the inner 13 year old -- HELP! » Racer, posted by shelliR on July 25, 2001, at 23:57:58
i don't believe that those girls are "perfect."
if they lack your insight, they're definiely impefect, but we all are.
ah so some weight and age, but you're a damn good writer! and rider apparently,too? you're not working in Pennsylvania, are you? i know how snotty and miserable those private camps can be, i was once a counselor.
no. one. is. perfect.
you can have blonde hair and pearly whites, but what about the inside?
i agree with Shelli. last night i did something (in a blackout drunk) that embarrassed me this morning. at 6 am. i swam across a lake shouting out the names of everyone i olve. repeatedly. it helped to keep me afloat.
best wishes to you,
sar
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