Days 172-173: Directing children within conflict

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I am co-directing a group of kids (ages 7-12) whom we are teaching the basics of theatre. I've been involved with this group since September and it's been very educational in many ways: I've faced myself as a director, gone over my relationship to children in general and learned a lot about how children “work” in terms of behavior, cognition and self-expression.

Today we had another meeting and due to a couple of problematic children the situation got chaotic. I was faced with my helplessness as I had very little clue as to how to solve a situation like that, and as I was trying to figure out what to do I noticed myself thinking about how the other director – my mentor in theatre for the past 10 years – would perhaps handle the situation. A very interesting survival mechanism.

As I was thinking “how would she handle this” I pulled up some memories that I associated with the situation. I remembered a situation from just half an hour ago where she had reacted in a certain way to certain behavior and then I cross-referenced this with older memories. In that survival mode any course of action that seemed “valid” (validated by a memory of a situation where the action apparently “worked” / produced the desired outcome) was as good an option as any.

Interesting here is that within that survival mode caused by my fear of losing control over the situation I myself did not stop to consider what the best possible course of action would have been – I didn't event try to figure it out by myself, because I had an example to mimic. And so I would try an approach another had presented without stopping to consider why I would act this exact way and what the consequences would be, because I just wanted the chaos to STOP by any means possible.

The situation ended up with a child crying because of conflict and as the rest of the group went on with the rehearsals I tried to solve the situation with her. As I approached her I noticed that I was talking with a harsh tone because of her previous destructive behavior and I got scared that this might frighten her. As I got there next to her she indeed drew back and completely shut herself away from me, and I admitted to myself that I didn't know what to do, that I was helpless, that I simply didn't have enough knowledge and skill to be able to see what the best course of action would be – and so I stopped pushing myself with the thought that I “have to” know because “I'm the authority to these kids”. I allowed myself to stop and listen to myself and to just be there with the child – I did not know what to say to her to get her to open up, but I knew that just being there, being available to her would be important so that she wouldn't feel abandoned, as if I didn't care. And so I staid close to her until another person stepped in.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing control over a group of children because I fear that the ensuing chaos would be blamed onto me.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear directing a group of children because I perceive the children to then be completely on my responsibility, so that no matter what mistakes they make I would be the one who pays for it.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist taking responsibility over children because I perceive them to be “unpredictable” and thus a great risk to myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing control over the situation because I fear that the children would see me as “incompetent”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing control over the situation because I fear the other directors will judge me as too young, inexperienced and incompetent.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing control over the situation because I fear others would then judge me to be “less than” what I am supposed to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect myself to know how to direct and teach a group of children even though I have little experience of such.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect myself to excel at something I have little to no experience of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect myself to live up to the standards I have set for myself, not realizing that these standards have not been thought out realistically as they do not consider the practical reality of things and thus cannot be lived up to unless someone (myself) pays an extra price for it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that by having high standards for myself I will avoid making mistakes, not realizing that this line of thought assumes that I reach my standards every time, which is not realistic because my standards do not consider the practical reality but only consist of ideal images and fantasies, and that by having high standards (or standards at all) I actually increase the risk of failure because the effort needed for not failing is more than I can realistically handle.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the judgement of children because they are not yet as corrupt as adults and are thus more likely to be honest with their feedback – not realizing that I fear feedback because I do not want to face myself, and that feedback is actually welcome and to be embraced if I actually want to grow, develop and expand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear facing myself as a director because I have been afraid of my self-judgement, not realizing that my self-judgement does not consider the fact that I am not (yet) a professional and lack a lot of necessary information and skills and that my self-judgement is thus not valid at all because it is not based on that which is actually HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to put myself down when I have perceived myself to have “failed” while directing a group with thoughts such as “I suck at this”, “they hate me”, “they must think I suck”, “I'm so stupid”, “they don't trust me at all”, “they have no confidence in me” - passing the blame all around and making the situation bigger than it is without ever looking at what actually happened without an emotional layer painted on top of the events.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame others for my self-blame and project my insecurities on others by interpreting their indirect communication (body language, behavior, tone of voice) to be a validation of what I most fear in that situation – for example, seeing another person look at me a certain way and interpreting the look to mean disdain/hatred/boredom/refusal/etc. when in fact nothing of the sorts was directly expressed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not embrace working with children – the most honest human beings around – as I have not realized what an awesome opportunity it is to face myself with so many mirrors around me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use my fear of facing myself as a justification to hold my defenses up while working with children.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify not showing my true self to children as flawed as I am by believing that I need to be a stern authority to children and that I need to do this by wearing an authoritative character.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that an authority cannot have flaws because that would reduce his/her credibility, not considering the option that being open and honest about one's flaws might actually produce better results as then one would not be seeing oneself as separate from and above the children but as one and equal to all of them as we are all human beings and we all make mistakes.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I need to be “above” children in order to achieve my goal of keeping things in order and avoiding chaos.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that the director of a group needs to be “above” the group so that the goals of the group work can be achieved because I perceive and believe the group to be unable to do this without an exemplary leader. [This needs elaboration – why do I perceive and believe human nature to lead a group into chaos if not externally directed?]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create myself an “authority character” through which I have faced situations where I need to be authoritative but which I am afraid to face as myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all the numerous moments I have been hiding behind this authority character I have not truly lived but merely survived.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, within my fear of losing control over the situation, to try to survive the situation by looking for a fast solution from examples set by others instead of stopping and looking at what is actually here and considering what I myself could do right here right now.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to panic when a situation is “getting out of hands” as I immediately imagine worst-case scenarios and believe them, not realizing that as I act through panic I act through fear and that acting through fear has destructive consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exert my fear on the children as frustration, not realizing that as I exert my fear on another as frustration I blame the other for my fear and abdicate my responsibility as the creator of my experience.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to place another person in a position where I learn to do things based on the example of the other alone, ending up with helplessness when the person is not around in an unfamiliar situation to show me how things should be done.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as the other has not been around and I have reacted to her absence with fear, to search my mind for memories of her which I could follow instead of the actual person.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that whatever pictures of another there are in my mind – memories, imagined scenarios, characterizations – they are in fact not real as everything in my mind can be altered by the mind and nothing in it can be trusted to follow anything but my twisted perception, and that to base any actions on guesswork and calculations based on these pictures in my mind is thus the equivalent of driving a car with my eyes closed and hoping to not drive off a cliff.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trust my perception of another person to be enough direction to solve a situation, not realizing that as I do not look at what is actually going on around me but only trust the survival mechanisms in my mind I am not making a proper evaluation of the situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I cannot reach a solution without stopping to consider that which is actually HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I exert myself upon others and “solve” the situation by overriding others by force, this is not a solution but a violent compromise others have to comply to because I am accepted and allowed to have more power than others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I override children with my “solutions” I actually abuse those who are at a disadvantage because of their physical development so that I could feel like I have succeeded in “solving” something.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not listen to how children propose to solve a conflict and justify this with the belief that “I know better” because of my older age – not realizing that age in itself has no value but that which those years have been spent on.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not listen to the participants of a situation and not hear their suggestion for a solution and instead believe my interpretation of the situation that I was not involved in but overlooked from a distance and override everyone with a “solution” based on this interpretation – not stopping to question my interpretation and to evaluate the situation from everyone's point of view.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make the surrounding chaos as movement and sound to feel bigger than it is by filtering this information (audial, visual and spatial) through fear – and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to thus sabotage myself from slowing down within the chaos as I have looked for a remedy to my fear and not a solution to the situation.

I commit myself to slow myself down with breathing when and as I face conflict as this will assist me in facing who I am within the situation and seeing what is actually happening.

I commit myself to take into consideration all participants of a situation no matter their age as I see, realize and understand that we all participate equally and carry equal responsibility as we are all equal as living beings with one life.

When and as I try to survive a situation by looking at others for examples (either present or within my mind), I stop, I breathe and I realize I am looking for an easy way out as I am trying to find a pattern that has appeared to have worked before. I stabilize myself in breath and I face the fear that I am trying to escape. I realize that no matter what anyone has done before me in similar situations, the situation is never the exact same even though they may resemble each other – and that thus no ready pattern can ever be a solution that could be followed blindly without my active participation and questioning. I then approach the situation at hand from the starting point of breath.

I commit myself to face children by pushing through the resistance to be here defenseless – in practice this means engaging in full eye contact, turning my body towards the child and breathing throughout my interaction with the child while being aware of the movements of my mind.

I commit myself to embrace the company of children as an opportunity to learn of myself.

I commit myself to face and investigate how I use and abuse the position of authority with children.

I commit myself to face myself as a participant of conflict.