The Unhypocritical Oath, Part 1

I met a colleague for a walk several weeks back and when she suggested a hilly route, I paused (yes, the thought of an incline made me hesitate) and said, “Yeah, let's do it. I haven't been exercising lately.” Then she paused, and in a lighthearted way that didn't quite sound like the appropriate accusation that it was, exclaimed “I just read your blog post about exercise today.” “I know I know I know, it hasn't been that long,” I quickly inserted (it had been a week). “I just haven't been getting in as much as I would like.”

The very evening I wrote about mindful cooking, I botched some roasted veggies due to basic inattention and I may or may not have checked my email in the time it took for my sausage to grill.

And yesterday I ran into a lovely woman I haven't seen in forever and one of the first things she said was that she'd been keeping up with my blog and that she was finding it helpful, to which I responded “Oh-thank-you-so-much-I-totally-haven't-been-taking-my-own-advice-I'm-about-to-write-a-post-about-hypocrisy.”

Clearly accountability is on my mind. This is good.

See, the thing about caring for others in any way is that you must check to see if you are holding yourself to the same expectation and hopes as those for whom you provide support. Plain and simple.

Sometimes the misalignment is obvious. 10 years ago I was a coordinator for a mentoring program for children and adolescents. I worked in a building in the Tenderloin that had a youth center on the first floor with windows facing the street. There were always youth inside playing pool, doing homework, or just hanging out.

I was a smoker then and on one of my first days went outside for a cigarette. I didn't feel right about standing in front of the youth center smoking, so I walked around the block and tried to enjoy a short cigarette break. What I found during the five minutes I had left was that I was standing on a street with drug deals to my right and people nodding off to my left. It was hot and the air smelled of urine. I had a moment of clarity. If I don't want these kids to smoke and if I don't want them to see me smoking to the degree that I'll hang out in the middle of THIS, maybe I should stop smoking. So I did.

But sometimes the mismatching of norms for self-versus-other is more subtle. I know a lot of therapists who simply speak unkindly to themselves, leaving the voice of the self-critic to her own devices. There are those who fill their time to the brim while preaching time management, and those who self-medicate with substances, food, and/or harmful behaviors while exploring healthy decision-making with clients. Occasionally I'll meet a therapist or social worker who still has never been to therapy.

If this sounds familiar to you, congratulations. Why? Because every moment of recognition is a potential moment of intervention, and there's no time like the present.

Check out this Wellness Tool for a simple way to start.

And while I've been speaking to those in the helping profession, this same concept is true for everyone. We're all prone to put ourselves last at times or to not live by the lessons we expect others to learn from. (Anyone who has the pleasure of parenting a teenager knows that you can't really get away with this without the hypocrisy police being called. Save them the pleasure.) 

So I stand here in all my glorious confessions to take an unhypocritical oath and I invite YOU to join me.