To Transcend Bias

As a green counselor a couple of decades ago I attended a training seminar on counseling women survivors of sexual abuse. I'd already done this work for a couple of years. The trainers asked for our experiences with this type of counseling. When I related mine, and said that I'd had a good bit of success, one of the trainers flatly said that I couldn't have done it. When asked why, she said it was because I was a man.

I wasn't sure enough of myself as a counselor to stand up to someone who was supposed to be an authority and giving a training seminar. Later I regretted not walking out at that moment. But now, with many more years' experience and reflection, I wished I could have calmly dealt with her on logic alone.

By her logic I couldn't be a substance abuse counselor if I hadn't had a substance abuse problem myself. I couldn't have counseled anyone with schizophrenia if I hadn't had schizophrenia myself. In the full extension, by her logic I wouldn't be able to counselor anybody but men my age who had brown hair, grey eyes, was short and skinny, was an Eagle Scout, had been to Europe twice, played the piano, and was intellectual. It would be hard to make a living like that. And a lot of people in need of counseling wouldn't be able to find a counselor.

Of course this trainer was working out of what she understood. We all do. Yet what she ended up doing was unprofessional. Her biases weren't sufficiently understood inside herself to prevent her from misusing her position of authority. But imagine if she had: the training would have gone much differently. She would have engaged me rather than exclude me. She would have been able to accept that not all men were either abusers or so different from women that they couldn't possibly understand. She would probably have had a much fuller understanding of the subject since she understood herself, and the quality of her presentation would have been much higher. Poor woman: she would have avoided showing herself the fool.

We all have biases. But the task, whether given by the Delphic Oracle, the Bible, psychological ideas of self-actualization, the Tao, or whatever traditionally wise source, is to transcend them. It has been a lot of work on my part to do this and I won't be finished before perishing. It's not easy work for anybody. But the longer I go, the more I know, the more and more I believe that people are capable of transcending the things that limit us inside, and once we do we liberate ourselves and those we come into contact with. Life gets much simpler and more authentic when the mistaken is laid aside. Unnecessary fears diminish. Artificial separations dissolve. Being thus less guarded, I have more time and energy so that I can act more out of charity. If the majority of people around me did likewise there would be far less anxiety and depression because we'd all be helping each other rather than suspecting each other.

Until life is through with me I can't help but believe that we can do it.