The second Dr. Becoming letter, from the book In A Spirit of Caring
Lynn D Carlisle, DDS
I wrote the first letter to Avrom and Deborah King after attending a workshop they presented in 1976 on participative management. The letter was published in their newsletter Nexus in March 1977 as “The Odyssey of Dr. Becoming”. Go to: The first Dr. Becoming letter - from the book, In a Spirit of Caring to read the first Dr. Becoming letter.
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"Remember my participative office? Well, I discovered that it wasn't. When I returned from the Participatory Management Workshop, I really thought and felt that ours was a participatory office. Slowly, I came to realize that I had grossly distorted the facts. (I lied like hell.) I was uneasy in my relationships with my staff, but I didn't realize what was happening until I explained to a friend, a NEXUS subscriber, what I was doing. Here is what I told him: On Monday I was participatory or person centered. Tuesday I was directive. Wednesday was my day off. Thursday I was authoritarian. And on Friday I (and everyone in the office) was so confused and frustrated that we couldn't wait for the weekend to start. This obviously produced a lot of stress and anxiety because no one knew who I was going to be. Putting it mildly, I was lacking in genuineness or congruence. I also came to realize that I had (have?) a strong need to control everything and everyone in "my" office. I literally was Maslow's hammer (ball peen) and I had pounded many nails. This attitude, and my lack of personal congruence, resulted in two of the three people who attended your workshop quitting. It really hurt me when they quit because I really thought I had a participatory office, now I think I realize what caused them to quit. The realizations of how I influence the character and configuration of my practice is both exciting and awesomely scary. The people around me are mirrors and the reflections I see can be disconcerting. Another insight I have had is how intensely competitive I am. I was raised in an atmosphere that stressed competition. This competitive attitude was enhanced in dental school (my thing (crown) is better than your thing). I had a need to be perfect, excel. I am a damn good competitor, but competition is only productive when you think you can win. How do you win when you are competing with yourself? I did a lot of comparing with other dentists, people. I drop magic names like Pankey Institute, Reed, NEXUS, etc., etc. I have blah, blah, blah. What a bunch of wind, but I still do it. I hear that so and so did $000,000 last month or year. I did more or less than that. I feel superior or inferior. The saying "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him." is becoming very real for me. You know from my other letter that I was searching for the magic solution to everlasting happiness. I found that I was giving my power away by deifying others into super beings and then depending on them to solve my problems for me. I have killed a lot of Buddhas. But I am the process of learning to trust myself. Being in touch with my anima animus (feminine masculine) has resulted in a freeing of my softer side. My anima helps so much in my people relationships. However, when I am doing the mechanistic aspects of dentistry, I had better be in touch with my animus or I don't finish an equilibration or the bridge won't fit. I frequently have trouble making the instantaneous switch from mechanics to people and then I become frustrated. I have gradually let go of the (hierarchical) doctor patient relationship and I am establishing a mutual relationship in which we both can grow. I view myself as a helper and resource person. This has reduced my anxiety more than anything. THE PATIENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS HEALTH NOT ME!!! I very much value the SRI profiling service. I have used it in hiring two people. I now have a receptionist who is a warm, caring, empathic person who hates typing and book work; and an assistant who did not know mesial from distal, but who thoroughly enjoys helping people. But that's all right! We are learning, growing and caring together. Well, all this is related to my practice. I want to share with you my personal odyssey and growth. It has been scary, exhilarating, joyous, disconcerting. But it feels great. The journey has been in getting to know, trust and love me Lynn Carlisle. Truly self discovered learning. Our friend, Carl Rogers has written: "It is not the special professional knowledge of the therapist, nor his intellectual conception of therapy, nor his techniques, which determine his effectiveness. It is the extent to which he possesses certain personal attitudes in the relationship. They are congruence or genuineness, empathic understanding, and unconditional positive regard." It took a long time for the meaning of those words to sift from my intellect to my gut. I am now, just now, getting a glimmer of what they mean. I was trying to apply empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard as skill to other people. But it wasn't working. What resulted were apathy, confusion and distrust. IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME TO LEARN THAT I HAD TO BE EMPATHIC, GENUINE AND UNCONDITIONALLY LOVING WITH ME BEFORE I COULD HELP OTHERS. I recognized this long before I felt it. When I experienced this, I started letting go of a lot of perfection crap trying hard (forcing), controlling, comparing. I became much more accepting of myself, and in accepting me, I was able to trust and love myself enough to let the real me show through. Hey! I can be me, genuinely me, and that is much easier. I had always avoided confronting (or even getting in touch) with my real feelings. I had expended a vast amount of energy in trying to maintain a facade. I was afraid that a creature from the Black Lagoon was lurking somewhere behind my facade. Through reading, workshops, groups and communities, I discovered that this fear was not valid. Suddenly, previously troublesome things started falling away like ugly scales. People were more accepting of me. The atmosphere in our office became more harmonious. I can let people love and care for me and I can love and care for others, particularly significant others. I HAVE GIVEN MYSELF PERMISSION TO FAIL OR TO DO POORLY. Under this condition, miraculously, I don't seem to fail or do poorly as much. I trust the process more and in that trust, good things just seem to happen. This was a very inward, self centered journey in self discovery. As I tumbled, fought, searched, I forgot about others at times. They felt far away wife, family, co workers, and friends. At times, it was and still is lonely. I have to have and remember (remind myself) to know and own what I am feeling at the moment, good and bad, so I don't repress it. My awakening started with the warm, caring nurturing people at a Center for the Studies of the Person "Living Now" workshop. They helped put me in touch with how special people are. (Rereading this tells me that I sometimes lose touch with the value of people. In my last letter I talked about my discovery of how great people are. I discovered it again. I probably will rediscover it many times.) As you can tell, I still experience stress, doubt, suffering and frustration. But now I view them differently. I think that they can create a positive tension in which growth occurs. In this workshop, Stanley Keleman diagramed growth this way: ENDINGS - BEGINNINGS - MIDDLE GROUND - NEW FORMS He said that before you can have beginnings, you have to have endings. Endings release energy so you can venture forth. This energy sends you into the middle ground which is a place of confusion. Out of this confusion come new forms, new directions. William Blake tells us "That anything capable of being imagined is an image of the truth." It is my perception that is important. When I can focus on an idea, then that idea will become real for me. In moments of confusion, if I can visualize in my mind an idea or goal or hoped for event, then I can use my creative tension to venture forth. In venturing forth, I feel trepidation, doubt and stress so I retreat to a safe harbor where all things are known. When the known become uncomfortable and no longer tolerable, then the idea or desire I passionately want seems to happen in a synthesis and wholeness that often transcends the initial goal or idea. It "just happens". Naturally and spontaneously. But everything that had gone before helped create the happening. The thing I still value the most is relationships. Warm, caring, nurturing, loving relationships. (I'm discovering it again.) This is the harbor, the reward, the renewal recharger for me. These relationships can just be there; or they can be elusive. So elusive that I wonder if I will find experience them again. But when I allow this love to flow through me and don't try to grab it or contain it, I become free to start: Living beginnings
Living changes
Living endings
Transcending
And beginning again
Living Now (Gay Leah Swenson)
That helps me to:
Love, laugh, cry
Grow
Feel snow falls, rain falls, sun glows
Feel life's rhythms, patterns, transitions
Hard, fast, easy, slow
Grow
Trust and love you
Trust and love me
We
Be. Become all I am meant to be.
(Lynn Carlisle)
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE DR. BECOMING LETTERS Carl Rogers has called what I went through (and still am) "a process of becoming". Learning is not a smoothly ascending process. Somehow, we have acquired the ideas that there should not be any setbacks along the path of learning. I remember when I learned how to downhill ski. The first time I went skiing, I knew that skiing was something I loved doing. I went every chance I could. I read books, magazines, brochures, planned trips, looked at equipment, went to ski movies and eventually moved to Colorado so I could ski. I also took terrible falls on easy slopes, hard slopes and everything in between. I broke some skis and became immensely frustrated at my slowness in learning. In rereading my Dr. Becoming letters, I realize that I followed a very similar progression in dentistry. I had an intense interest in helping relationships and the techniques and philosophy that was presented at the L.D. Pankey Institute for Advanced Dental Education. I read voraciously, attended workshops, tried out the approaches presented, made numerous mistakes along the way. Figuratively, I fell down numerous times, made the necessary corrections from my mistakes and continued on my way to learn more. In some ways I am still confronting several of the same issues now and many of the other problems I was dealing with when I wrote the letters have fallen away. Now, I am much more congruent in my relationships with my team members and clients. I still make mistakes, but they are much less frequent and usually result from my not paying attention to what I am doing. This is also true of where I am technically in dentistry. The middle 70's were a yeasty time for me as I made major discoveries in my personal and professional life. It was during this time that I progressed through the continuums at the Pankey Institute, became interested in wellness and holistic health, went to the Center for the Studies programs, built a new office, and went through a divorce.
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