{"id":315,"date":"2010-06-26T17:41:11","date_gmt":"2010-06-27T00:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=315"},"modified":"2010-06-26T17:41:11","modified_gmt":"2010-06-27T00:41:11","slug":"bull-in-a-china-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=315","title":{"rendered":"Bull in a china shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Reposted from Sacramento Street Psychiatry<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes an unruly character disrupts the surrounding peace and quiet. \u00a0Loud, gruff words and ill-considered behavior mar the scene. \u00a0Onlookers cringe, awaiting the impending destruction. \u00a0For this beastly fellow is bound to break something: wreck a\u00a0friendship or relationship, make a\u00a0workplace\u00a0intolerable. \u00a0All the worse if the setting harbors sensitive souls with feelings easily hurt. \u00a0It’s a disaster waiting to happen.<\/p>\n

We might say this person is a “bull in a china shop.” \u00a0In this image a powerful animal threatens fragile items of great value. \u00a0Its untempered impulses\u00a0\u2014\u00a0hunger, lust,\u00a0anger \u2014 may bring the edifice crashing down at any instant. \u00a0Even the natural movements of a relatively calm bull may clumsily destroy order and\u00a0beauty all around. \u00a0The message is clear. \u00a0This bull needs to be controlled, tranquilized, restrained if necessary. \u00a0Or magically turned into something innocuous, a house-cat perhaps. \u00a0As a last resort, it must be led out of the china shop without delay, before more damage is done.<\/p>\n

Certainly there are interpersonal situations described very aptly this way. \u00a0However, in my\u00a0psychotherapy work I’ve repeatedly encountered this scenario turned on its head. \u00a0I’ve begun to look at the phrase differently: Maybe the bull isn’t always the culprit.<\/p>\n

The phrase “bull in a china shop” usually implies that the china shop was there first. \u00a0The bull wandered in uninvited. \u00a0But suppose we set up the scene another way. \u00a0Picture a bull grazing in an open field. \u00a0Yes, it’s a big powerful animal, and maybe it’s a bit clumsy. \u00a0But it isn’t hurting anyone; it is living in peace.<\/p>\n

Then imagine someone sneaks up on this bull \u2014 and builds a china shop around it. \u00a0The animal suddenly finds itself constrained, unable to move without hearing the crash of broken porcelain. \u00a0Its natural movements are now seen as destructive, as the china is surely at risk. \u00a0Yet it isn’t quite right to blame the bull.<\/p>\n

In human relationships, the person with socially disturbing behavior hasn’t always caused the problem. \u00a0This manifests most obviously in work with children, who frequently express parental distress through their own misbehavior. \u00a0Even in adults, an apparently calm and mature person may quietly stir up someone else, who then becomes the\u00a0“identified” patient (a term from family therapy implying that one or more other parties, equally worthy, evaded this identification).<\/p>\n

In individual therapy, patients often build a case in calm, reasoned tones that\u00a0their partners, close relatives, or coworkers are unruly, uncaring, even beastly. \u00a0They describe emotional ruffians who threaten them without cause. \u00a0It can take months, or longer, before a patient’s own role comes to light. \u00a0This may take the form of\u00a0passive-aggression, i.e., goading the other into lashing out. \u00a0[Some links describing passive<\/a>–aggressive<\/a> behavior<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

There is no small measure of passive hostility in building a china shop around a bull. \u00a0All too often we observers arrive late upon the scene, only to witness the wild animal haplessly bumping into fragile dinnerware. \u00a0It can take a long time to realize that the bull was just being a bull, and that the root problem was the apparently innocent bystander who constructed a china shop the bull was almost sure to topple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reposted from Sacramento Street Psychiatry.<\/p>\n

Sometimes an unruly character disrupts the surrounding peace and quiet. Loud, gruff words and ill-considered behavior mar the scene. Onlookers cringe, awaiting the impending destruction. For this beastly fellow is bound to break something: wreck a friendship or relationship, make a workplace intolerable. All the worse if the setting harbors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,8],"tags":[40,33],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-nature","category-psychotherapy","tag-passive-aggression","tag-sacramento-street-psychiatry","odd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}