At my mental health practice, learning about others and what makes them unique is one of the best parts of my job. People who work in helping professions (i.e. mental health, education) do not know who will be coming in through their door next, nor do they decide whether to help someone based on how they look, who they love, or the color of their skin. Helping professionals do not use sexual orientation as a factor when offering assistance, nor do they care about religious preferences. No, what helping professionals do instead is offer unconditional positive regard and support toward all people they serve, and this should be a powerful beacon for everyone to follow in this very moment.
Rather than being afraid of people who are different from us, we can instead learn from their unique life experiences. We can also offer empathy toward those struggling, just as how we so appreciate when others offer empathy to us during our tougher moments. The reality is that we all need a hand in life, and support when we are down. Right now, we are very divided, and we are using ascribed variables (i.e. race, sex) to quickly lump people into categories of “good” or “bad.” And we know at a very fundamental and core level of our soul that this is not healthy (or right), as our parents, teachers, and religious leaders have never before told us to act out against those different from us. In fact, those important people in our lives have always, consistently, told us to do the opposite.
I see a lot of gloating, taunting, and bullying online at this time, with countless insults being hurled at trans people, gays, people of color, people from various religious backgrounds, and even the entire gender of women. While those making the off-color comments tee off on the most vulnerable among us, please be warned that the tables can be turned at literally any moment.
For example, what if:
- One of your kids suddenly comes out as gay?
- One of your kids is confused about his/her gender?
- One of your kids becomes romantically involved with a person of color? Or a person from a different religious background than yours?
- One of your kids faces the same kind of unfair criticism you are currently throwing out at someone else, how would you feel about that?
- One of your kids were physically assaulted, or suffered mental health issues, simply because of how he or she chose to love or worship?
Somehow we have gotten far away, ever so far away, from basic, common decency. Rather than try and understand why a person might be confused about their sexuality or gender, we instead mock them, assault them, and wish for ill will. How have we gotten to such an angry, bitter, and uncaring position toward those who are our most vulnerable? Today, it has become easy (especially online) to make fun, threaten, devalue, and even dehumanize people deemed “not worthy.” Is this what we want to teach our kids? That anyone different than you, from skin color to gender identification, deserve to be heckled and discriminated against? Who teaches those values? Not our parents, teachers, or religious leaders, that’s for sure.
“Do unto others as you would have them unto you.”
Do we still believe the message above? If we keep narrowing down in life the people that we consider “acceptable,” soon there will be few people left. We are an ever-changing, diverse nation, and it is those very qualities that have made our country great. Why make fun when we can learn? Why promote violence when we can help? Why take from someone, when we can work together and gain even more? Why not choose compassion over hate?
I learned a long time ago that right is right, even if nobody is doing it, and that wrong is wrong, even if seemingly everyone is doing it. If you don’t feel good about the ways you are thinking and acting these days, listen close to your intuition, and make adjustments accordingly. The hope here is that we move back to a more understanding and helping society, and that we take more seriously the ways we are modeling behaviors for kids in this moment. I am seeing increasingly more people at my office — including kids — that are scared, scared for who they are, what they believe, and what might happen to them if we continue to divide our country with such hate and anger. This isn’t about politics, or your favorite political leaders, but instead a call for all of us to be a little better, a little more understanding, and a little more tolerant of differences that we don’t always understand.
drstankovich.com
