no! little donkey! ogres are not like cakes! and quit asking probing questions!!

Okay! Monday's class... Uh.

I think after that, BroAdams should perhaps bring us parfaits, because you know, not everybody likes onions.

Okay, so I've gathered that everyone has a soft inner core. Based on the plant life around my home, I know that even pine cones have a soft inner core. And so we're supposed to get to that. But the kicker is, we're supposed to get to there without having that as our agenda. Okay! Are we all lost yet? Good. You've obviously been attending.

Once again, we've addressed the Emotional Bank Account concept, this time especially geared toward these lovely high emotion, low trust situations. We've been told it's good to rephrase content told to us like a good faithful translator (like Lassie's family, who can *always* interpret Lassie's barking as a sure sign that Timmy has fallen in the well again, and the bank is about to foreclose on the farm and those muffins that Ma has made should be disposed of because they have high levels of saturated fat), but it's bad to parrot all the time. It's good to pick up on nuance but bad to read between the lines. It's good to recognize feelings but bad to interpret them. It's good to reflect back feeling, but bad to probe or evaluate. Things were so much simpler back in Lassie's day.

So with the role play, which I really have lost all grasp on, what with trying to remember who "Brad" is in relation to my hypothetical self, and now with the Bob/Tom identity crisis or whatever, and Brad being all distraught about Bob (but we're not allowed to ask the question we're all thinking; "What about Bob??" because then Brad puts the padlocks back on his onion layers, though I don't think I've ever seen an onion with locks in it. Maybe there's one coming soon to the Spori gallery?). So we're left with these terribly awkward situations wherein the brave souls who try to talk to this guy are stuck saying "So you feel embarrassed" and then Brad goes "Yeah." AND THEN WHERE CAN YOU GO?? "....Uh. So you're way embarrassed."
"I didn't say that." And the emotional lockdown repeats.

Can't we just get a locksmith or something?

I guess part of the point is that sometimes people want to talk about something, but it's in their soft inner core and so they beat around the bush (or onion, or cake or parfait, or whatever), and we want things to be comfortable because it's inconvenient to be uncomfortable, and we try to establish that comfort by agreeing with them thinking it'll get us onto the same page. But we're told not to do that. But we're also told to reflect back feeling. But how can you do that without interpreting feeling??