change your filter

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind
~ Shakespeare

A client came in feeling like a "lost cause" because he was constantly over-reacting to his wife.  She'd say a certain thing, look at him a certain way and with a certain "tone"; and he'd growl, get up and walk away.  He justified his behaviour by saying his wife was getting angry at him for no reason.

When his wife came in she denied being angry and was tired of his unfounded accusations.  His defensiveness was destroying their marriage and, apparently, a lot of his other relationships too.

My client was misreading his wife's motives through the lens of his own traumatic past. Although he was trying to "let go" when he was triggered, he still perceived slights and criticism where there were none.  Swallowing his emotions only ended up clogging his heart.  When he wasn't exploding, he was imploding.

When my client started cleaning up the negative stories he was telling himself, he began to react more positively toward his wife.  Tension between them disappeared, and his other relationships started going better as well.

Trying to change your heart without changing your mind is like trying to run a motor with a clogged filter.  It goes nowhere fast.

Check your stories from time to time, and clean them up.  Change your filter.  It works!

the sins of the father

He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He visits the iniqiuity of the fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation
~ Numbers 14:18

June is PTSD awareness month.

We are all probably already familiar with the acronym PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) used frequently in conjunction with the well-known traumatic impact of war.  It used to be called shell shock and is now also associated with men who have witnessed or survived violence in the line of duty; police officers and fire fighters, for example.

But did you know that women are twice as likely as men to experience PTSD?  Sexual violence accounts for some, but not all, of it.  Most is due to the Tragic Trickling Down Effect (TTDE?) of trauma in families; the sins of the father are visited upon their sons, but also (and especially) upon their wives and daughters. This is called intergenerational transmission.  Traumatized people traumatize others.  Most often women and children.

Yes.  There is a connection between PTSD and family violence.

It's not that hard to understand.  When oppressed by violence we want to fight back.  When we can't, all that fight gets bottled up inside.  When triggered by some mundane situation causing frustration, it bubbles up and explodes as anger and aggression... Who gets the brunt of those urges do you think?

It is a fact that the risk of being violated increases proportionately to your social status and power.  If you are a female handicapped minor (or elder) of color, your chances of being abused are much higher than that of a white able-bodied adult male.

It is easier to take your angries out on someone less powerful than you.  Sick but true.

Since we are raising awareness this month, we should talk about C-PTSD, which is the more complex response to long-term trauma not limited to crime or war. C-PTSD results from being exploitated in a relationship where there is a discrepancy in power, between parents and children, or men and women.  When a person is chronically bullied, abused or abandoned by a parent or loved one on whom he or she is emotionally dependent, the victim (or "survivor") displays many of the symptoms that a war vet, police officer or fire fighter would, while also frequently being affected at the level of one's identity and self-esteem, one's core sense of self.  Again, war and crime aside, the weaker members of society are most affected by C-PTSD, and the perpetrators most often men.

This month, while raising awareness of the impact of violence on soldiers and others who have voluntarily stood in the line of fire, let's not forget the less heroic survivors of the same insidious dynamics of human suffering: the less powerful who, daily, without choosing it, are victims of violence everywhere-- women, minorities, children, the handcapped and the elderly.

The test of civilization is the way it cares for its helpless members
 ~Pearl S. Buck