Feb. 22, 2021 Reflections on my father
Peace and prosperity reflect a state of flow which is created daily, hourly, mentally and actively by a team of people. Their cooperation works because each participant lives according to what is nourishing and strengthening for their own core-being. Each individual attends to their own self-care, growth and development while at the same time respecting and working around the needs and behaviors of the others. The conditions which make peace possible are created daily, hourly, mentally and actively by a community made of people living according to how each thrives best.
The ancient fairy tale of the princess and the pea contains important natural laws for understanding and practicing the art of prosperity. This is an invitation to dream of and strive for such a utopia.
The princess in the story has clearly been raised according to how she flourished best. The environment and the people participating in her education and socialization have lovingly trained her from the very beginning to reign, because this was in line with her disposition and her interests. Her mind was stimulated such that her innate thirst for knowledge and hunger for interesting challenges could be satisfied. She learned to trust her perceptions and to pursue her need to acquire wisdom and experience. She was encouraged to explore what caught her interest. She was empowered to formulate her questions in many ways so that they could be understood and answered by different kinds of people. Therefore, she learned to speak many different languages. She gathered her experiences into a lifelong process of constantly renewing and growing her wealth of knowledge. She learned to integrate her feelings both as a healthy radar system and an indicator for appropriate and successful problem solving. She became proficient in self-care and channeling her creativity into a wide range of practical activities. She acquired the habit of adjusting her self-care as appropriate to her needs and tasks. She became proficient at combining the wisdom of her senses, her observation of her environment and her ever-growing understanding of justice in order to govern those entrusted to her. She enjoyed the challenges of creating harmony and amicable problem solving. With wise guidance, she had developed the spiritual habits that ensured that her choices are in alignment with and in the service of cosmic laws of order. Thus, the Pea-ce Princess is a prototype of a person who can handle power mindfully, lucidly and beneficially for her community.
The prince in the story is the child of joint monarchy based on team work and respect. The loving parents understand both their country and their child well. They know that their offspring would not be able to secure peace and prosperity for their nation without a suitable partner. The child trusts his parents and follows their wise advice to choose only someone on eye-level, who both attracts him and complements his ability to reign. Since there is no such person in the vicinity of their country, they send portraits of the prince to noble families in distant lands, because the archetype of nobility ensures that their children are properly nurtured and educated for the job of ruling a country, if their talents and interests lead them to do so.
The princess immediately recognizes the match and the need for swift action when she sees the portrait of the prince. Her parents trust their child's decision and gather the culturally designated gifts and proof of her qualifications. They outfit her and her attendants accordingly and send her on her way. Unfortunately, this is a lot of material baggage, which makes for slow progress on the journey to the far away empire.
The princess has the knowledge, the orientation and self-protection skills to make the difficult and long passage successfully on her own. Therefore, she leaves her escort behind and travels ahead alone. However, her appearance temporarily suffers from the hardships she overcomes on her journey. Thus, she arrives expediently, but unconventionally.
Upon arrival her behavior speaks for her credibility. Her physical condition after the travel adventures makes the king, who is better able to judge material things, doubtful. However, the queen knows that a person who could be a good match for the prince would feel a dry pea even under 20 mattresses no matter how badly she needs to sleep. Such a person would be able to perceive and deal with different kinds of irritations in the empire in tandem with her son. Therefore, the princess is subjected immediately to the ancient pea test.
The princess not only senses the pea under the mattrasses. The next morning, she also gives appropriate instructions to ensure her physical well-being as an important basis for fulfilling her duties in teamwork with her future husband.
Thus, a fairy-tale alliance is formed, showing us the prerequisites for achieving peace and prosperity for all.
Acting as if your false claims about another person are reality is actually abuse and a form of bullying.
In Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Gaslight," the lighting in the house would flicker when the perpetrator turned the lights on in the attic to do something to harm his victim, who noticed the change in the lights in the living room. By claiming that her perceptions were not reliable, he gradually got her to doubt them and go insane, so that he could exploit her undisturbed.
Today the word “gaslighting” is used when a person denies the reality of their counterpart in such a dominant way that only their truth remains. The "exploitation" today is more subtle than material gain. The dominant person usually uses it to try to secure their truth, their self-esteem, and their position of power. Although most people who use similar communication technics are not evil or sociopathic, the strategy has become a part of normal bullying in many intimate relationships. Because we are now increasingly sensitized to more and more forms of devaluation, the word gaslighting has found its way into our everyday language. As the word has become increasingly common-usage in the wake of the anti-discrimination movement, it is also used when there is no malicious intent involved. However, research and personal-experience confirm that the effect of gaslighting is destructive to both individuals involved. Trust, the emotional connection and the collaborative bond between partners can even be destroyed by it.
Especially the victims of gaslighting and covert emotional abuse are finally finding a language to express the damaging experience, to regain their speech and their sense of dignity. They are raising their voices and searching for ways to eliminate it from their love relationships – be they friendly, familial or romantic.
The opposite of abuse is loving care which has the effect that the cared-for party actually flourishes.
But when insecurity strikes and evil thoughts take hold, nurturing and healing love is easily derailed. In fact, claiming - in your own mind or to others - that you know how your victim feels and thinks, what they expect, need, do, want or intend is a form of "gaslighting", bullying or emotional abuse. If you use your thoughts and assumptions as the basis for your actions without double checking the accuracy of your ideas for the person in question, you, too, may be causing completely unintended harm for which you are none-the-less responsible. In the mildest form, you cause a conflict with the person. If that person then confronts you with the effects of you projecting your ideas onto them, call yourself lucky! Now you have the opportunity to renew the connection to that person and evolve into a happier more satisfied individual yourself.
If you recognize your inner or outer wrongdoing, you can enjoy healthy shame! The best-case scenario is that the consequent remorse, which arises from your shame, sends you on the search for alternative ways of thinking and communicating. The more adept you get at noticing what un-met personal needs triggered your tension, your intensity or simply the unconscious habit and therefore your abusive impulses, the easier it is to regulate them. There remains only the laborious but promising habit change. Ideally the love between you and your victim makes them supportive of your efforts and a healthier, more satisfying communication style evolves in the process. Thus, love heals, nourishes and grows for all involved!
But what do you do as a victim of gaslighting or this form of subtle emotional abuse, if your counterpart is so stuck in their ideas, that your truth counts as nothing to him? Keep in mind: logic does not help at all! A simple hint is enough: "oh dear, the connection is gone between us!" Then you have two options: Distance - physical, emotional, mental - until your love has become tangible again to both of you or you can switch by catapulting them into a state of mind where the connectedness and interest in you as a person has returned. This can be a totally illogical and unexpected memory jog, like the remark "Oh, sharing the sunset with you on Saturday was delicious" or "remember how hard we both laughed yesterday in the kitchen". It is important that the shared experience is very specific, sensual and consensual. If your counterpart can switch, you can ask them if they want to know how you actually feel and what you think. Beware, as soon as you assert that what the other person claims is not true, you can easily get into a power struggle! The point here is to change your own communication habits. Keep in mind you are responsible for your well-being. If you got hurt, distance and care for yourself until you have recovered. It takes two to tango! Your habits of reacting, responding and resonating with your loved-one are your responsibility. The alternatives to fight, flight, fidget or freeze are in the realm of back-off, recover, relax, get curious and playful.
By the way, even in nature: shit is fertilizer . . . l
How do you feel connectedness? How do you know you are connected? Why is connectedness so important? Why is loneliness, the antithesis of connectedness, so common?
For us humans, connectedness begins in the womb. A new being unfolds from the genetic material of two different beings in connectedness with itself and a nurturing and protective environment. On the one hand, it is the very practical and material connectedness of the cells of the genetic participants that create a third entity. On the other hand, the new entity can unfold only in the connectedness with the milieu in which it finds itself. This is the first experience of connectedness that we have and that we carry within us for a lifetime.
Immediately after birth, the child continues to be nurtured and protected by the ensouled environment. In many cases, the surrounding counterpart is not only air and light, but the mother or parents, who resonate with the child in a more or less interactive way, especially with sound/voice and touch. Nourishment means not only food, but also connective exchange. Just as every seed uses the genetic imprinting on an optimal environment to claim the best possible for itself, we also remain aligned to this knowledge stored within us. In spite of the fact that every human being has the basic experience of connectedness as an entity developed from egg and sperm and by the connectedness between embryo and the environment of the mother's womb, this primal experience can get lost to our awareness because of our socialization. If we do not succeed - for whatever reason - in feeling and claiming this connectedness with the “other”, we feel needy – lonely.
I was deeply touched by the news that seeds of a type of grain that has long since ceased to exist in our world, having been preserved dried in clay, germinated and flourished thousands of years later - as soon as they received water, light and soil. In addition, the human brain is a particularly remarkable organ that is constantly trying to optimize itself. This means that, like the seeds, we can resonate with and claim good environmental conditions when we then have access to them. More than that, we can even create the ideal environmental connectedness ourselves through external design or even our imagination! The brain's ability to do this is an ingenious invention of Mother Nature. In terms of loneliness, or connectedness, this means that we can always tailor self-care habits to what is best for us.
In the first phase of development until about the second year of life, we are actually dependent on the real material, psychological and emotional care our environment gives us. This attachment is a kind of extension of the womb without which -or a correlate- we die. However, we are not passively dependent, but familiarize ourselves with the environment and fluidly respond to and with it. We collect and store interactive experiences that we can use in the future. Biologically/psychologically, it is mainly the sensory-motor intelligence that unfolds in this phase, which remains with us throughout our lives. If we survive the first phase of development, we can proactively improve the living environment we are connected to by internalizing these experiences with our imagination in a second phase of development.
In this second developmental phase, the internalized knowledge that sensory-motor intelligence provides us with is playfully placed in a wide variety of contexts. We can differentiate between inside and outside, but can become increasingly self-reliant because of the external experience we internalize. We succeed in this to varying degrees for innumerable reasons. However, this basic ability of the brain stays active throughout life as long as mechanical brain damage does not compromise it. Within the framework of this newly unfolding imaginative intelligence, we can sensually experience not only what we have absorbed from the outside, but also create experiences that correspond to our deep genetic wisdom about how to flourish. The sensual experience of an event, whether in dream, in fantasy, or through conscious imagination, imprints itself on us just as if we had experienced it externally. Through the unfolding of this form of intelligence, the experience of "I" connected with a "You" arises for the first time. The "you" corresponds not only to people, but to all those with whom I am connected on "eye level" as two equal and different beings. If, however, I am firmly anchored in social-cultural power hierarchies that determine the exploitability of the other person, the experience of connectedness succeeds only inadequately and creates serious conflicts between the biological program and the cultural sense of belonging. The deeper I can sensually experience and feel the "you", the more I feel connected. Yet in the effort to bring about harmony, the brain may suppress this sensual intelligence to ensure the survival benefits of belonging to our community. For the lovers, all this has remarkable consequences.
When we meet in fluid exchanges of equal and different, connectedness unfolds, protecting us from loneliness. If we are not aware of how we secure connectedness, it is possible that we make ourselves dependent on luck or how our partner treats us. However, true existential dependence takes place only in the formative stages of the individual. If we believe that we are dependent, however, we omit the living interaction and co-creation of the "other" that we can experience as our nurturing, healing and protective environment or as a human being. Thus, we feel lonely rather than connected. A culture that draws appreciation from utility, however, does not recognize the living essence of the thereby judged other and cannot truly connect -in the sense of this primal experience and primal need of human beings. From the time when logical thinking begins to dominate in the child, the danger of loneliness grows. Fellowship, community or a sense of belonging ensures a survival advantage in a hostile environment. However, they have nothing in common with connectedness. Shared activities or swarming behavior are forms that appear in true connectedness. Therefore, lonely people aspire to such forms as a substitute, even if they are not filled with connectedness. Among people, the following types of communication characterize connectedness: mutual recognition, enjoyment of the other, sharing time and activities, doing good to one another - as a gift or in helpfulness - and verbal, as well as sensual, affection. Those who feel well connected with themselves are able to connect with other people. Therefore, self-connectedness is a core quality of life and a prerequisite for good connectedness with your loved one. In other words, the communication that promotes fluid connectedness can be actively practiced from the development of imaginative intelligence, within the individual, and is the basis for interpersonal connectedness.
Seen in this way, radical self-care is a kind of two-way communication with a beloved being. The dialogue between the inner child and the mindful adult, the interactivity between heart and ratio, or between bodily sensations and behavioral impulses are all forms of internal connectedness that increase the connectedness between you and others because you are then accustomed to communicating collaboratively. Although connectedness with nature and animals is good for you, it is not enough to ensure trust and happy interactions with people. Traumatic experiences with people sometimes stick firmly in the body and need a special form of healing attention to release in order to allow healthy, natural, flowing communication to become free. Often, we just need to understand that and how connectedness works to mindfully shift from competition and power plays to connectedness. Sometimes it is helpful to engage a healer for trauma resolution! Examine what's at hand for you right now. Then draw strength from being secure, centered and grounded enough to enjoy the risk of exploring and establishing new habits.
Corona Blues: Lovelessness in your couple´s relationship
Countless couples since the beginning of the Corona restrictions have been stuck together all day in tight living quarters doing “home office”. As a society, few of us have learned to keep a healthy distance from another. On the one hand, we collectively suffer from loneliness - even within our couple relationships. On the other hand, we are often "too close" to each other for comfort. Unkind treatment of both yourself and others has been passed down in families for thousands of years. Meanness in your internal and/or external behavior in a family setting leads to a suppression of healthy needs and thus to an almost zombi-like ability to function within a familiar system. Unkindness in dealing with each other can create a tighter bond, because meanness is often associated with increased emotionality on one or both sides. Unkindness in dealing with each other also creates a frightening gap between partners, because fear of closeness arises. But emotional closeness can also be a product of the couple's own - very exhausting – communication codes. The time is ripe for a change!
Scenario: You are sitting at the kitchen table doing “home office” on your computer and your partner strokes your hair in passing. You want to scream! It's too close for comfort at that moment. It is distracting! You need space for yourself and you are sorely missing being separate most of the day, which allows you to look forward to meeting each other when you do. But what do you do now! But what do you do now? You get a caress and react with thoughts of murder! What kind of monster are you anyway? Your head spins and your ability to concentrate on your work is out the door!
Under what conditions and with what inner frame of mind does a caress, feel intrusive and loveless? If I am not granted my autonomous space and the freedom to claim my distance from you as I need it, a caress can encroach on the space I need for my own sense of self. If I do not feel respected in my autonomy and do not feel that you enjoy, love and desire me when I do "my thing", then I might very well feel that I am being treated by you as if I were a teddy bear or some other object of your needs. I certainly do not feel like we are on eye level and collaborating with each other. If I have not been able to develop healthy autonomy in my childhood, I might also perceive you as my Teddy Bear or other object of my needs. This can temporarily be a stimulating trade-off. However, each couple has a kind of energy field between them made of attraction, love, caring, magnetism, belongingness, interest in each other, and your history together. People often might call it “our love”. I call this third entity your mutual, personal “field of resonance”. It can perhaps be likened to music. As such it is perhaps your mutual song. Moments of discord happen. That is part of life. However, when it is not a moment but a chronic jangling of your nerves and therefore of your mutual song, then something should be done about it. Such misunderstandings usually develop when one or both of you are under a combination of short- and long-term stress. When it happens though, it has an impact on your children or pets, if you have them, and also or actually primarily it has a negative impact on this field of resonance. There is a danger that your “love” atrophies and/or is overridden by pure magnetism or consumerism, so as not to feel the pain.
Let´s assume that the corona scenario described above is only a passing and superficial problem. Then clear negotiations that create – hopefully temporary - spatial and practical game rules will help. Partition walls, curtains, noise protection headphones, seating arrangements, time rules for using mutual space and the ability to address the problem are examples of things that help. Making agreements to put aside a time to jointly clarify adjustments respectfully is a good habit to get into. 20 to 90 minutes a week at the most is a sensible allocation of time for such discussions. The following procedure is useful: First, each person names what has been working well. Then each person states non-judgmentally what has been causing friction. There follows a phase of brain-storming – thereby collecting potential solutions without evaluating them. Only in the next step are those options that seem promising, operationalized and a clear timetable for their implementation is agreed upon. When the meeting is over, a hug is a good habit. At the end of the meeting the “business setting” is dissolved.
In order to develop smoothly and pleasurably both individually and as a couple, time and space for personal autonomy, as well as the nurturing of the mutual field of resonance allows the couple to prosper. Autonomy develops during childhood when, on the one hand, the infant can claim closeness, protection and attention at any time when it subjectively needs to do so. On the other hand, she is left free to explore her environment as independently as she dares - without interference from an "adult". Later in life, a person who has alternately provided himself with loving self-care and excitement-generating adventure rests within himself. She who acts from her autonomous center will not intrude or encroach insistently on her loved one. Unless that happens out of habit - but we'll discuss that later!
As pointed out above, coupling generates a special form of resonance field between the individuals. This energetic third is both nurtured and protected by physical, emotional and spiritual encounters, and stimulated to unfold and develop by distancing, stretching, trust and confrontation to name a few of the challenges along the way.
Possibly the atmosphere in the family of origin was raw but warm-hearted. Maria, however, has developed a recognition of and sensitivity against unkindness by participating in yoga classes and reading psychology articles. Tom has no idea that she is reacting increasingly hurt to his derogatory jokes. One day she bursts into tears and wants a separation. Tom honestly does not understand what is happing. He intensifies his derogatory remarks to show her how harmless they are. The effect is the opposite of his intentions. Maria moves in with a friend for the time being. Tom feels offended and unfairly accused. Because of the safe distance and the radical care Maria experiences with her friend, she dares to date Tom. He is surprised and is still very hurt. She deals with him affectionately AND when he relaxes and makes the first derogatory joke at her expense, she tells him that this is exactly what she can no longer handle. He tries to defend himself. She doesn't question his motives at all, but insists that the problem is, she no longer wants that kind of communication in her life. At the next joke, she rephrases it, according to the formula: if I understand you correctly, closeness means for you the right to cut me down. Did I get it right? He draws a blank, but quiets down. At his next joke she physically leaves the common space for the time being. But the attraction between them is strong and true. Thus, the couple continues to develop a new form of communications during the next encounters until she moves back home.
Unkindness is a remnant of an age of hunger, war, material hardship and physical danger. Globally, however, most people retain manners that came from the time when effort and rude behavior served to meet basic material needs, and loving interactions were subordinate to practical work and therefore rarely practiced in many households. In the absence of a culture of mindful, loving, cooperative interaction, the wounds that arise emotionally when emotional needs are not met fester or become numbed, rather than healed. They are swept under the carpet by developing habits of consumption and pleasure-seeking entertainment. Because corona-restrictions have suppressed coping behavior dominated by side-tracking and countering the attacks, we wind up face to face with the pain and an emotional awareness of loveless interactions. It is not enough that we have entered the famous “Age of Aquarius” or that words like cooperation, diversity and inclusion have become common. Fear of change is producing terrible frustration in couple relationships, in social life and in politics. Respectful communication is a powerful tool in creating a new happier, more satisfying life that we humans have had before. It starts at home in the couple. Understanding our healthy range of feelings and learning to use their intelligence competently instead of trying to suppress them and get mired in unruly tension. We are becoming discontent with the familiar lack of kindness and downright meanness which prevents us from caring well for ourselves and others and produced all kinds of psychological and physical illnesses. Therefore, let´s buy into the tools that our new “age” is presenting us with - with or without Corona. Our ability to notice excess physical tension, release it and shake it off, thereby being able to elongate, walk tall and feel our inner balance. That already makes it so much easier to understand the respective meaning and purpose of our emotions and to integrate them intelligently as the energy we need for concerted pro-active behavior. If we begin there, we are taking a big step toward establishing a healthy attitude toward our own well-being, to the well-being of the couple we are privileged to be a part of and toward the well-being of the communities we live in.
My father died at the age of 95 in January 2021. I and my three other siblings each wrote a eulogy for his memorial. As my youngest brother commented, “it is remarkable that four children can grow up in the same house with the same parents and use the same refrigerator and wind up with totally different stories of their childhood.” One of us was the favorite child. One of us fulfilled the role of the child well and was rewarded with phases of mutual time and projects together. One of us was the scapegoat for everything. And one of us moved away at the age of 16, which was the earliest she could manage it logistically. I am the last-mentioned child. I felt bullied, verbally abused and not perceived as a valued individual. I knew that my self-esteem was in danger, where I was and looked for people, who could see and value me. It has been a journey full of challenges, because my father´s behavior toward me was considered valid and non-refutable in the culture of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
The memorial for my father or as they call it now “the celebration of life” was very moving. Looking back and reading and hearing the stories of others who experienced my father opened a new perspective on him for me. Apparently, he was a loving and competent father, a loyal friend, a committed and compassionate partner of his second wife, a playful, wise, wonderful, creative, successful, esteemed and loved man. But then, why was he so different to me and a few others in the family? How could he be such a beautiful well-loved person and also a verbally sarcastic, mean, sadistic, and demeaning bully, who knew precisely how to wound and cripple his prey sometimes out of anger, but also simply for fun?
Part of the answer comes from neuroscientific findings. With the development of the neocortex some 2 million years ago, we could switch perceptional perspectives allowing us to detach from our natural bonds to nature and other human beings. It is healing and helpful for me to know that my brain can do that as well. The brain is able to perceive the other as an object of my behavior or as a human being like myself. Our culture has trained us to switch back and forth without necessarily even noticing it. Thus, we can use many kinds of weapons to maim or destroy others in service of pleasure, material gain or self-protection. The development of norms of hierarchical power structures had some odd side effects. We learned to believe that if the larger community did not see, hear or feel called to intervene because they were entrapped in similar codes of behavior, then what we are doing is ok.
During the only trip we made together Dad asked me at dinner one night, why I moved so far away. I answered simply and quite honestly, that I needed to get away from his meanness. He answered that that was his prerogative. As long as I sat at his table, he could do with me, as he liked. End of that conversation. We changed the subject.
I remember his delight in his power to hurt me. A typical scene at the dinner table was often as follows. I would start out obviously happy and carefree. He would comment, that he could make me cry in a New York minute. I would laugh and say “no way”. One short comment later my joy and my self-esteem had been destroyed completely. I left the table in tears and he grinned. I began planning my escape very early in life. But I also used the time in my family to investigate impartially the roles of perpetrator and victim, replaying scenes that I had witnessed or experienced in my mind. Everyone does the best they can in any particular situation. I learned to understand well the satisfaction of the precise and effective attack. Those imagined roll-playing games prepared me for working with bullies respectfully and successfully later in life.
In the 50s and 60s, we lived with dictums like “Intimacy breeds contempt”. Not only in the family, people often feel overwhelmed by the complexity of emotional relationships. Contempt or meanness is a kind of tension release for at least one party involved. Protected from social scrutiny and for lack of alternatives, it becomes habitual.
Many prominent public figures were known for sadistic behavior within the family, while presenting the ideal model of good behavior in public. All this was normal behavior. The paradigm shift which is now going on in public is bringing more and more cruel behaviors to light, which have been common tools of hierarchical power and exploitation in the past. Gradually, this “normal” stuff is beginning to look wrong. Most people who use these tools are good people on the whole. The beautiful things so many people had and have to say about my father, as they condole us for the loss, are in stark contrast to what a few of us within the family experienced. However, we are beginning to talk about it for the first time non-judgmentally, potentially even collaboratively.
I was not only the target of the meanness, which at the time was considered socially acceptable child-raising. We also sang together and practiced laughing in tunnels together. I collected a small library of quotable sayings that are wise and useful as affirmations and helpful behavior guides. Once when he visited me in Berlin, he did some handy-man improvements to my apartment then, which touched me deeply. As a younger child I was in awe of his attitude toward the animals that he hunted. He told me that he honed his abilities to shoot - both with bow and arrow as well as with guns – so that he would kill his prey so quickly and precisely that they would not suffer. That type of natural morality has been a guiding light in my life. In that context, he was my ideal of an Indian chieftain. I expanded my understanding of that attitude later, with the Book of Changes, the ancient I Ching.
However, removing the barbs of meanness from my soul, thoughts and self-esteem was a lot of work! Work that was worth every minute of it. I not only learned to deflect new barbs without getting hurt, mad or defensive. I also discovered the feeling of joy, in being able to love the perpetrator, while dodging the bullets! I also learned to respond instantly in a way that foiled his aim and prevented damage. I learned to enjoy my autonomy, flexibility and dexterity in side-stepping attacks and to nourish our bond none-the-less. Because I lived so far away, the opportunities to practice with him were far enough apart, so that I could hone my skills in peace. In the last years of his life, he lived on Maui and I in Berlin, Germany, so our encounters were reduced to the digital means of skype, telephone and email, which simplified distancing tactics. But a true warmth began to enhance our communication. There is no question in my mind, that some of the prerequisites for pain-free communication was my autonomy and my willingness to nourish the bond of mutual love on the one hand and his comfort and happiness in later life on the other hand.
In addition, I had lots of opportunities to develop a wide range of skills to help people deal with, love and transform bully tactics in my behavioral psychotherapeutic practice with the couples and small companies I worked with.
Here is an example of a transformation of barbs. My father would say to me regularly “Give in to the inevitable graciously.” As a child, I felt ridiculed for my intensity and neediness. That saying meant that my needs would not be met and that I was on my own, when I needed support, attention and understanding. Since I have become a psychotherapist, I quote that phrase often, because it has helped me – as an adult - and many of my patients find a frame of mind consisting of inner balance and grace while dealing with things that cannot be influenced by using internal or external pressure. That saying – among others- has become an invaluable treasure I inherited from him.
My father worked hard for his successes. He came from a blue-collar background and won respect and acclaim for his rise to president of several companies not only because of his intelligence but also because of his invested diligence. His habit of investing everything he had, earned him a problem with high blood-pressure. However, once he retired, he allowed his playfulness and compassion to evolve more fully. However, he apparently always shared his joy and his wisdom freely and was well-loved for that.
He was a remarkable person. He was not an ideal father to me, but he was an amazing model in life and source of wisdom. All his life he continued to evolve more fully into his own ideal self. He was not only economically a self-made man. He was incorruptible in every way. Every step of his life´s journey he chose the fun, the comfort and the hard-earned miracle over suffering and what he considered stupidity. He always asked himself: is this my job? Sometimes when others thought it was his job, he was perfectly clear and unbudgeable in his judgement, that it was not. He did not take on other people’s crosses, but sometimes he facilitated their ability to carry their cross. And sometimes and with some of us in the family, he simply refused to take on a role, i.e., father or mentor, if he did not feel it was his job. That left some of us out in the cold and badly bruised by neglect or devaluation. The lesson to be learned is autonomy, graciousness, appreciation and the ability to respond and interact in a way that changes the game-plan. You can use your experience, being the target of bullying behavior to hone your playfulness and dexterity. Try it. Recognizing that you can improve your life as an ex-bully with the same skills is a delightful discovery as well. I highly recommend looking into it!
Thank you, dear father, for all the challenges, the wisdom, the growth you provoked in me. I love you dearly. I am sure you have gone into the light in peace. I can still see your smile, when you were having fun and hear your laughter and wisdom with pleasure.
Secret shame is an ugly, corrosive and therefore harmful condition. It creates both psychological and physical disorders. It not only impairs the ability to pursue and satisfy one's healthy needs. It also thwarts happy interpersonal relationships, as well as your relationship to yourself. In a culture of hierarchical power structures, it damages the self-esteem of individuals in favor of those in power. It is the opposite of dignity, pride, playful joy and vitality.
This all sounds terrible, and it is, but the solution is beginning to appear in the dawn of the new age in which we are already increasingly engaged. Nevertheless, it is up to each one of us to personally untie our shame knots. It helps to understand them first.
Shame and guilt are not biologically predetermined. They are the result of the experience that our superiors, parents, power-holders, commanders, those, who have power over our well-being, have disapproved of something our personal life force itself draws us toward. But to disregard this disapproval would mean exclusion and therefore risk of being ostracized by the community, which is a kind of social death sentence because humans are social beings. You certainly do not want to be left out in the cold! Every infant understands that dependency with its whole body - probably already in the womb. We take in the commandments of the community in which we are born with our mother's milk. It shapes every level of intelligence - whether physical, imaginative, rational or abstract. Those who have a bad conscience and are therefore not quite capable of behaving freely are easier to dominate. Even though such suppression is not meant maliciously, the effects damage us. The people who love us are rarely free of the culture in which they grew up. But that means that in order to feel alive and also still secure in loving relationships, we need a new culture in which “normal” consists of collaboration, cooperation, respect, dignity, inclusion, and a whole lot of other still somewhat foreign ways of dealing with ourselves and others. My book contributes to this paradigm shift, but more so, it also shows how each of us alone or in our couples’ relationship can evolve into more vibrancy, autonomy, and connectivity.
Shame begins when you have done something or wanted to do something that has overwhelmed a significant other and you have realized that you are now a potential outcast because of who you are or what you have or might have done. You don't know how to come to terms with this and therein lies the rub.
However, you are no longer alone in this. The past decade has gifted us with the internet, therapy, social media, health guides and all manner of now socially acceptable tools, helpers and access to others with the same or similar issues. More and more people are striving for emotional well-being, which is far from your situation when you are struggling with shame or guilt.
Getting out from under that handicap always starts with your body. The more comfortable you feel with and in your body, the easier it is to find and implement solutions to complex problems. Simple breathing, stretching or relaxation techniques make you more comfortable, intelligent and loving. An archetypal solution to the shame problem as pointed out by the ancient I Ching begins with the recognition what specific need you want to fulfill. Then you realize that the pursuit of it will certainly not be fully approved by the social or family power structures defining your life until now. At this point, we have two things to explore. I suggest putting the question aside for now, why your “boss”, whoever that she or he might be, can´t cope with your need, whatever that might be. Because only when you are in touch with yourself can you find a solution with him or her that might be satisfactory for both of you. After you succeed in connecting with your body, you can explore the need that got you into trouble. The better you recognize, understand and comprehend it, the better you can explore how to fulfill it with dignity, joy and pride. Don't forget to keep your body intelligence involved in your explorations. Your body faithfully expresses every fantasy or thought in tension or movement. If you are on good terms with your body, it will guide you on your journey to consistent well-being.
If you feel that your attempts to fulfill your need could lead to harming someone, your shame is an important step towards regret and thus towards a new round of brainstorming about how to fulfill your needs and be true to yourself and others. In this case, it helps to realize that to err is human and that correcting or taking a new approach fosters creativity and vitality.
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One of ways that narcissists communicate is by ignoring you. Typical bi-polar behavior can be verbal abuse on the one hand or charming ad attentive on the other hand. But how much does diagnosing someone actually help you? And are you using the diagnose to go one up on the bully? Ultimately it seems that you are entangled in a hierarchal relationship that is painful for you. Let´s look at the behavior of narcissists simply as within the spectrum of bad bullying habits.
I was born in the USA in 1950. Back then there was no word to express what we call bullying today. However, it was rampant everywhere. Even a small child I tried to figure out why people were so mean to other. As a teenager I once read about a group dynamic situation in boarding schools, whereby one child was chosen by the other students as “it” and thereafter ignored totally by its peers until it committed suicide. Science was faced with a mystery. My political activities in the late 60s revolved around political bad behavior and getting to peace on all levels of society. In 1980 after studying psychology, I worked free-lance as a psychotherapist, couples- and family therapist and coach. The debilitating effects of disqualifying communication are obvious in all the problems presented to me. I have been exploring how we can get out of devaluating communication for as long as I can think.
The countless couples with whom I have worked – either directly or indirectly have helped me discover increasingly effective and sustainable ways to achieve joy in your life and your relationships. We discovered how important every aspect of body, mind and soul is and how these different aspects of the individuals involved intertwine to create our habits of interacting with our loved ones. We have discovered that with persistence and a clear focus on the desirable emotional state, you can establish new habits playfully, whereas judging and trying hard impede a healthy tendency to change for the better, if we can relax to do it.
We all have a biological predisposition to enjoy life. We also have a basic neurobiological ability to align ourselves inwardly such that we can choose our focus. By nature, we can feel good – as individuals, in our love relationships and in our other interactions. However, our hierarchical communication training emphasizes competition, exploitation and devaluation. These skills are all dependent on a higher tension level than is fun, but have contributed to material prosperity in human history. They also prevent emotional prosperity at a time where emotional well-being is the fundamental component of creative problem solving for the variations on complexity that exploitation has produced. The book I have written is a manual for all those who want to strive for and accomplish perceptible sustainable happiness – especially in love.
The reason why I have waited so long to go public with this project has to do with my personal development, on the one hand. On the other hand, the past few years have witnessed a growing vocabulary and social receptivity for the issue of exploitative discrimination in many different social, economic and political contexts. Emotional prosperity, happiness, joy, eye level communication, inclusive interaction, self-care, collaboration is becoming more and more widely practiced. At the same time, bullying, devaluation, discreditation, “me-too#”, abuse, domestic violence, assault, discriminatory and otherwise harmful behavior have become socially acceptable topics of discussion.
How about you? Do you feel like shaping your life in such a way that you feel more alive and happier as a human being in love? I have discovered many ways to decrease emotional abuse in your life and increase your inner alignment and autonomy, thereby nurturing healthy eye level interaction with your loved ones.
Here are my definitions for the three most important terms in my book.
Equality in a couple means dealing with oneself and the other with joy and respect from an equal, upright and appreciative position. Equatable means different and equal in value and dignity.
The most straightforward definition of love that I know is the feeling of affection and connectedness, independent of how it is conveyed. Ideally, love is not only a feeling, but also a way of behaving toward your loved ones.The biological phenomenon includes many processes that enable us to bond through erotic attraction, benevolent affection and tenderness. How we express this basic predisposition to connect with others depends on our learning history. The everyday bullying within connectedness in our culture leads to much suffering, misfortune and incompetence. Don´t you agree that a basic reorganization of our habits is truly worthwhile and makes a lot of common sense.The state of balance between autonomy and bond seems to be the most important control center for emotional well-being.
I am using the word bully much more uncompromisingly and incisively than common. Bullying or mobbing someone means permanent or repeated devaluation of that person. It is mean and a variation of domestic abuse. It is a personal form of discrimination against someone. It makes no difference for the quality of the effect whether it is intended or habitual or sub-conscious or otherwise. Meanness destroys happiness. There might be a thrill involved for the perpetrator, but no natural human joy involved for anyone.
Most people in our culture are bullies by the power of their socialization. We all tend to hurt others in our relationship field with words, gestures, tone of voice or other harmful communication. Bullying or mobbing is not about conflict. It has nothing to do with a quarrel. It is psychological abuse of power. It occurs most frequently in our intimate interpersonal relationships. Although it has become socially acceptable to discuss bullying at work or school, everyday bullying at home is hardly ever mentioned. Talking about it is very much associated with shame for the victims. If you realize that you yourself are a perpetrator, you tend to feel shabby and therefore suppress the thought as quickly as possible. Denial protects us from feeling bad.
As a five-year-old, I tried out my first mobbing attack. I tried to disempower my little sister by giving her the “evil eye”. She completely ignored it, however I began to maintain my dignity and self-esteem with further variations of devaluation of others. I soon expanded my repertoire by rolling my eyes and using sarcastic comments and voice patterns. My last experience as a victim triggered the writing frenzy that produced my book. We are within a couple the smallest and the most basic political social unit. Thus, bullying in an intimate couple´s relationship reflects the situation we have had in society at large for centuries.
The ease of change thrills me! The moment you notice that you are bullying someone, you can immediately take the first steps to change your perspective to eye level equality. The lymphatic part of the brain is the source of our emotions and our imaginative intelligence. It enables us to create and internalize new variations of the reference base we use for our behavior. Because dignity and an awareness of participating in human rights feel natural and good, focusing on these feelings support overcoming being mobbed. The job of composting shit to fertilizer is supported by processes in the world of nature. Natural observable laws -not theories- show us how to playfully and effectively change our interaction habits.
Your need for things, activities, behaviors of others and status are certainly familiar to you. How often have you tuned into your emotional needs, such as freedom, connectedness, contentment, happiness and similar immaterial vibrations? Test for yourself, how you feel, when you write down these needs and regularly tune into how it feels, when they are fulfilled. Even if you cannot remember experiencing the satisfaction of those needs, you body knows exactly how that feels. If you choose to do this little experiment, you will begin to notice how you somehow seem to be sleepwalking yourself more and more into these feelings of joy and fulfillment.
Such practical experiments make it easy to gently and somewhat unobtrusively steer your life into consistently more satisfying encounters at eye levels. What I enjoy most is how independent you become from changes that your partner might make. If there is a real attraction between the two of you, your relationship will morph or mutate into more resonance and happiness because you are individually and none-the-less actively co-creating your relationship as you transform yourself into a happier person. The fact that playfulness increases effectivity is a source of delight to me and I expect for you, too. By nature, we are all in our own ways curious, playful and constantly in a process of change. Detouring the blockades, we have been taught, can be very fun. Distructive limitations actually begin to fade when they no longer produce dynamic reactions.
Couples who do not live in resonance with each other have a poor long-term prognosis for happiness. This is a real pity, because contrary to the general assumption that the best sex in life happens during the infatuation phase, happy couples who have been together for 20- or 30-years report that their sexuality gets better and better with age.Recent research shows that active sexuality in later life protects against many diseases, complaints and discomforts. But for good sex at an advanced age you need playfulness, curiosity, flexibility and an eye level relationship.
The massive cultural upheavals that are currently in motion are affecting our private lives and intimate relationships daily. And your home is precisely the place where you are able to achieve the most substantial and satisfying changes with the tools that our biology equips us with. Allowing yourself to get familiar with these tools means participating in and quite guilelessly co-creating a paradigm change in the history of humanity!
You are participating in transition from a culture of abuse, competition and the accumulation of material goods in the panic-to-survive-mode to a culture of uncompromising perception, the integration of emotional and rational intelligence and teamwork with reciprocal appreciation for the stranger in your bed. With gentle, playful experimentation and a clear focus on flourishing, we can achieve a fundamental improvement in our personal quality of life and that cannot help but impact not only our intimate partner, but also the society that we live in.
If you are reading this on my website, click on “experiments” and have some fun exploring what I am talking about.
©2020 Linda Marie Leva. All Rights Reserved
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