“Testing, Testing, 1,2,3… Testing..”

Brian Lynch

I told someone the other day that helping someone is often like having your hands and feet tied and being gagged at the same time but still having to do something.

This has to do with one of the most important ideas I work with and that is that any type of criticism or negative feedback only makes things worse. Am I very good at this? Oh, I don’t know. I think I fail miserably at taking my advice all the time, but I think it is true.

I think we are all trying to do our best. I wrote this in my book and discussed it once with someone and that was the last time they ever talked to me as they really could not accept that idea. It has been my experience that the great majority of people, at some level, need to think that people at some level “want” to be or are “bad.” So if they are or “we” are all bad at some level then we must choose to be or do bad things and thus cannot always be trying to do our best.

The idea is simple, and that is that we are made to connect. The only way we connect is through truly being interested in one another. The only way to do that is to do our best, to “love” in the healthiest sense of the word. I believe this is a most natural and basic biological urge, this urge to connect. Therefore, to do other, not to do our best makes little sense. 

If we are doing things that hurt ourselves and others, then it seems a matter of not knowing how to achieve our goal. True enough, there are monsters all over the world past and present. Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein in our own home, but they knew and know less than anyone about feelings, yet have and needed connection no matter how perverted it was or is. Yes, they were doing the best they could.

If you don’t learn it how can you do it? Now many people will be irate about these ideas. Nowhere do I say that you do not remove yourself from harm or defend yourself from it when need be?

But what about the people we deal with from time to time and try and help, indeed ourselves!? Are we always trying our best? I think we are. I think, however, we will, over and over, sabotage our best-laid plans to “test” ourselves and others. We want to see if we still “love” ourselves enough to accept ourselves and, of course, we need to see if others will accept us so we test them. This is a well recognize residual, effect of abuse and we all have suffered some abuse from nothing more than living.

We test everyone. We test our parents, our spouses, our lovers or friends our children, the police, and our bosses.

The grandmother calls off the picnic at the last minute. The boyfriend is 45 minutes late. We say something controversial in earshot of the boss. Not only do we engage in corrupt activity, but we seem to go out of our way to get caught.

These are all secret “tests” for many people testing whether we will still be loved despite our “despicable” behavior.