A friend came up to me today and asked if she could tell me something personal. Curious, I said sure. She said she was thinking of the work I am doing at the Mansion – she is close to it – and she said she just wanted to say that she thought the work I had done there was remarkable,  it even made her cry.

She spent years working in nursing homes and assisted care, she remembered how lonely and needy the were. She thought I must be an amazing man to help them so much, to visit them and bring them clothes.

She hoped, she said, when she was old and living in elder care that there would be someone like me to come around and help. I mumbled something, felt myself blushing, and walked quickly out of the store. I just didn’t know what to say.

Praise silences me, turns me into a turtle, pulling into their shell.

Praise always makes me uncomfortable, perhaps because  I don’t really trust it or believe it, or maybe because I never ever think of myself as a remarkable man, or even a good one. Boy, have I stumbled along the way.

I don’t know if that’s true humility or not, but I have always listened to criticism much more closely than praise.  Because I know criticism is true, I’m not sure about praise.

I suppose the simple truth is that I just don’t believe praise, I think its a trap or a mistake. I told Maria about this encounter and she said I just didn’t know how to handle praise, or how to respond to it. This is true.

I think conceited people never hear anything but praise, I think praise breeds complacency and arrogance. My books got a lot of reviews, but I tend to remember the critical ones more readily than the good ones.

I get beautiful letters from people every day, but the ones I single out and respond to are almost always the ones that criticize me. There’s something off about that.

On some level, I think every bad thing people say about me must be the real truth, anything else is a sham. Yet I have a Rhino hide, it can take a lot of punishment of necessary.

When I think rationally about it, I think it’s a mistake to want or need praise, or to listen too much to criticism.  I would like to not need either.

The Internet is teaching me to listen to the mirror on the wall, not strangers.

Praise and criticism are ubiquitous online, why spend too much time listening to either of them, especially from people I don’t know?

I like to praise people, in my writing, on my blog, in my life. It feels good to make someone feel good about something they have done. I believe strongly in empowerment and encouragement, the two E’s of good writing.

It is so much more gratifying to praise people than to argue with them or dislike them. I’ve had enough of that kind of energy, it’s a poison you can’t see or smell, but it is killing us.

So why, if I can praise people, can’t I allow myself to be praised? The answer is I don’t know, not even after writing four memoirs and doing work with therapists for more than thirty years.

I suspect my issues with molestation and abuse creep into it. I associate praise and flattery with intimacy, and intimacy is very dangerous to me.

When I got home from visiting my friend, I knew what I had to do.

I called her up, and said, “look, I want to thank you for the very kind words you said to me and about me on the phone a few minutes ago. I’m not good with praise, I should have thanked you, not run out of the store. But I do thank you and need for you to hear that out of my mouth.”