Melody's got an Oprah playing in the next room and I've been listening in. And I'm just furious. In the rush to assign blame for domestic violence we ignore the real cause and guarantee that it will happen again and again. The same people who laugh at Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign (well not all of them because I laughed at it, too) seem to think the answer to violence is to just say no.

It's not that Oprah and the rest are clueless, its just that they refuse to open their eyes.

I know what we all learned about T/F questions that have 'all' or 'never' in them, but this time the correct answer is TRUE.

People (like the other animals on this planet) don't get angry until they are hurt, or even worse, believe they are about to be hurt. If you don't think that watching your relationship, your world, dissolving out from underneath you is painful, well, I don't know what planet you are from. It's horrific. It questions everything you have tried to believe about yourself. A woman in that situation is angry, too. If her fear shows up as physical aggression, no one will ever know. A man will absorb the rage and certainly not report it. It's more likely that in the failing relationship her anger will just mean she is cold, distant, and unsupportive. Or she may be looking for a verbal fight where she wins control by emotionally punishing the man until he simply can't bear it any more and must resort to violence to regain control.

Or, hopefully, walk away. From his wife, his life, his children, pets, home, everything. I did. I still spent a night in jail because leaving isn't even enough in this county, if you take your children with you.

So, I don't think it does any good to point fingers, particularly around our romantic relationships where even the participants usually don't understand what is going on. I'd rather focus on the solutions.

Much of it hinges on the concepts and understanding that are the basis of the Great Sex Seminars. They provide a way out of the mad cycle. You can be sure I'll blog about that later on.

One other area that really is a tragedy and sets up so many marriages for failure is the way so many boys are abused. They are forced to live in emotional deserts. If we didn't teach them from such a young age that their feelings were less than worthless, that they needed to be kept hidden where no one can know, then maybe they would be better equipped to survive relationships. They might even thrive.

Sexaholics and sex addicts, I'm not really sure if there is a difference. Wanting to have lots of sex seems perfectly OK to me. It's a lot of fun, it feels good, and it provides an intimate and joyful escape from the world. But when we use it to escape from life all of the time then we have the makings of a classic destructive addiction.

It really is tempting when the world is closing in and you just don't know how you can keep on keeping on. Escape into something! Drugs, alcohol, sex. At least if the sex is with your partner it's safe and harmless. Like all addictions, sexual addictions jump from being harmless diversion to a problem when we choose them over living.

The driver in addictive behavior is a fear of pain. Mounting fear amplifies the pain to the point we just can't go there. We find something to occupy our minds and drugs and sex do a fine job of this. Until we can regain control of our fear driven imagination, it is unlikely we will ever overcome the lure of escape. After all, we are human!

This kind of fear is natural and normal. Giving in to it is destructive and painful. It takes the help of a trusted companion to change this perception. First they have to gain your trust. You have to believe they won't hurt you and they absolutely be there to help you when you hurt anyway. That's a tall order and much easier to do in the context of an existing relationship.

Learning you really aren't alone is the first step in regaining some perspective. The pain isn't as big as you thought it was. With a clearer perspective about what you need (instead of the unreasonable expectations we only imagine other people have for us) and what really matters you may find there really isn't much discomfort at all. That new perspective and your assured companion really does change everything.

The real key is controlling your panic. As you will learn in the Great Sex Online Seminar, our primitive brain is so fast at making decisions (bad ones!) that we go into panic before we have a chance to think rationally about anything. Working with the cycles, you can learn to see other's differently. Even more powerful, you will see yourself differently and begin to have sex because you enjoy it, not because you need to hide.

I always assumed that sexless marriages resulted from the wife's lack of interest and the husband just giving up. He stays in the marriage for whatever reasons (there are many), and gets sex from wherever he can get it or not at all.

Since the birth of www.thisisgreatsex.com, people at social gatherings are interested in talking about their sex life with us. In particular, women.

It seems I've had it wrong. I'm trying to think of the last time I heard a man complain about not getting enough, not counting actors playing to the same stereotype I had.

What's going on here? Why are these women not getting the sex they want and need? More to the point, why would a married man not want to have sex with his wife but want to stay in the marriage?

We are physical and emotional creatures. We experience emotions in our bodies. It takes a lot of disconnect or acting to hide what we are feeling. Masking what we feel is a crucial life skill. We all have to do it. Boys have to learn it particularly well in a world where emotions are often seen as a sign of weakness. Shots of emotionally and physically tough athletes in tears after losing, or winning, a championship helps us learn how ignorant that is. Emotions fuel us. They are life!

Yet so much of our society teaches us to hide our feelings. Particularly our boys, who become the husbands of unsatisfied wives. So whenever something hurts, instead of feeling it, boys are taught to tough it out, hold it in. It really is no wonder that when a relationship inevitably exposes or even causes pain that they withdraw. They just don't want to be hurt. This classic self-protective behavior insulates them from the pain. It also prevents them feeling anything good, like the experience of lustful sex with their partner.

So, what is a wife to do?

Your partner built a thick, impervious barrier between you for reasons that make perfect sense to him. The distance is needed partly because of the discomfort your relationship naturally causes AND because they perceived that was what you expected. Too bad you can't just take the good and leave them with the bad parts. It doesn't work that way. It's pretty much all or none.

So it starts with being careful that your behavior, not your words (self-protectors get that way because they have been tricked by words before), accepts them as they are. In fact encourages them like you would a friend trying something scary. Earning that kind of trust doesn't happen quickly and it always involves setbacks. If you want his joy, you are going to have to be able to handle his anger and probably some hurtful things along the way. There was a reason you wanted him to keep it all to himself, wasn't there?

It's hard to change all of this without some help. The Oh Wow this changes everything and Great Sex websites present a practical model to guide you. Particularly when you do the online seminar and workbooks together, they present a framework that keeps you moving forward even when you just can't do what you know you are "supposed" to do.

Oh, and don't forget to ask for help. The program includes email help from both of us.

Domestic violence is so misunderstood. We all just want it to go away. Somehow we imagine that if we punish the perpetrators harshly enough, it will stop. This attitude is clear when supposedly fair minded people like Oprah are prompted by the Rihanna and Chris Brown incident to declare that a man who will hit you once will hit you again.

I'm reminded of a recent incident my son had at school. You see, they have a zero tolerance policy for socially unacceptable behavior. Well, there was a "mouthy" (principal's word, not mine) girl calling my son names and generally harassing him. She just wouldn't leave him alone no matter what he said. Until he used the "N" word. I suppose if my son were black, it would have been OK. Instead he gets three days suspension. Oh, and the girl who was verbally abusing him, well she didn't do anything wrong! In the workplace, this would be considered harassment and as an adult you could choose to leave. Not as a student. You have to stand and take the pain from the bully until you retaliate enough to be singled out by the authorities. A high price to pay for personal safety, don't you think? What message do you think our schools are sending to kids like my son?

What does this have to do with domestic abuse? When we start to believe there is something in a relationship that fulfills some deep primal need for love, acceptance, touch, or whatever your personal need happens to be (I need all of it!) then that relationship becomes super-charged and dangerous. We give up power. We confess our needs. And when it seems they withhold what we need, we get very scared (remember ALL anger is based on fear that something bad is about to happen). We believe this person has the power to make us safe and maybe even happy. Not only won't they give us another fix of what we need, they are also heaping pain (more fuel for the fear/anger).

And if we leave, we lose all chance of having the comfort and safety we desperately need. Just like my son, we have to stand there and take it until we go far enough that someone intervenes. Often that means somebody (almost always the man) gets hauled off to jail and criminal charges. The other "partner" is declared the "victim" of this violent, depraved animal.

Assigning blame

Society, the police, and county prosecutors jump on the bandwagon. They quickly become a tool for the victim to continue beating on the perpetrator. It doesn't take much compassion for what someone like Chris Brown before you start wondering why there aren't more murders after domestic violence arrests and prosecutions. Presumably its because the perpetrators are forced to realize that their expectation of love and support from the "victim" wanes.

Trying to make the relationship is every bit as dangerous for the "perpetrator" as the victim. Their wounds heal much slower than any physical harm they caused.

Oprah's not wrong, just wrong-headed

It's not that I really disagree with what Oprah said, I just would add that a partner who ignores your pain to the point you have to resort to violence to stop it, will abuse you again.

You see, they are both victims, or at least they are acting like victims. We prefer to call the perpetrator a "self-protector." Like my son, they were just trying to stop the pain. Don't they have a right to that? In the self-protector role they are very hard to connect with emotionally. As a result, they don't have much protection when they let someone close. Just as my son is probably too sensitive because he generally doesn't expose himself to tough situations (bullies like that girl delight in find a soft spot) the self-protector is not very well equipped to deal with the skinned knees and bruises that are part of every relationship.

On the other hand, the victim wouldn't be inflicting such roaring pain on their partner if they weren't scared themselves.

Our Great Sex Online Seminar is such a powerful tool for letting couples get past their protective armor, that even experienced couple counselors are using it in their own relationships to get past obstacles that have haunted them for years.

What could it do for someone you know?

We often get questions from readers with premature ejaculation problems

This is from my response to a reader who comes way too soon

I have some idea how frustrating that must be. Just about every guy has been too excited about knowing they are about to have sex. Usually its when you haven't had any in a while and you are so focussed on sex that you don't care who it is with. You just need it like you need air. You are just 'too ready'.

There are lots of articles on the web offering tricks and techniques that might help, but this is what I believe: We have sex on two levels, the personal, intimate connection level and then as physical beings that crave orgasmic sex. I want them both. In fact I need the intimate stuff before I can lose myself completely in the physical sex.

As long as you are primarily doing the physical sex, the guy who comes too soon will already be there just from the sex in their head ( sex IS mostly in our heads, anyway ). It just doesn't take much to push you over the edge. I suggest that when it happens you enjoy it! ( A BAD orgasm, No such thing! ) You are young enough and aroused enough that it should take no time to be ready again. Use that time to focus on your partner. All of them. Their entire body and everything they have to say and share. That time after your orgasm and before you are hard again is a great opportunity for you to get comfortable with being close to a woman, with touching her and being present enough to see how she responds.

I know you will feel at least some embarrassment. Just understand that's how you are right now and don't miss the opportunity to get physically close to a woman without worrying its going to happen. If she makes you feel bad about coming so soon, then I promise, you've already enjoyed her as much as you are going to.

The real solution is a partner you know and want to be with even if there wasn't any sex involved. Then the thoughts about sex aren't the only thing filling your mind. I'm talking about the kind of relationship where it is OK to be who you are. I'm afraid that as long as its just about sex, you will often find your brain has you way ahead of the action.

Our program is entirely focussed on getting that kind of close, intimate connection that lets you be whatever you need to be in the moment. The kind where coming quickly and easily is something you deal with together because you both want it. From what I understand about premature ejaculation, that is the only real answer.

In short:

• Let yourself enjoy your orgasm, you are obviously supercharged and ready for it so go with it.
• Use the time before you are ready again to touch and feel your partner. Ideally, establish good communication and learn to play with her body.
• Look for someone you trust and enjoy and work through the Great Sex program together to develop the skills you will need to help each other learn to have really fun sex.

Ed Youngs'Challenge

The challenge Ed Young the minister of the Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas started as of today has turned the Christian world on its ear. His challenge as many of you may have heard is for all the married couples in his congregation to have sex daily for the next seven days. The uproar this has created in the news and the Christian world is funny. At least it is to me.

Sex every day?

What is so strange about the idea of having sex every day. I mean, I am a woman and while I understand that many women are appalled at the idea of having sex every day, it makes complete sense to me! Why is it such an unwelcome a thought for so many people?

When you use sex as a weapon or as a tool for trade or do not have an intimate connection with your spouse then I suppose the idea of having sex every day. But the reality is that when 60% of married couples say they are unhappy with their sex life and 40 million American couples say they have a sexless marriage this is an important issue.

Clearly if the idea of having sex every day is a problem for you then odds are there is a problem in your marriage.

Joyful sex

Intimate, joyful sex is the heart and soul of a good marriage. If you can’t imagine “making time to make love” (to quote Ed Young) then you’ve got a problem.

Amazingly making sure that you make time to make love will create more connection and intimacy and is the best divorce buster!

When kids know their parents are being sexually intimate they feel more secure just because they know their parents are connecting and showing caring for each other. When you are playing sexually with your spouse you are increasing your sense of well being personally and your relationship is transformed.

But of course, the truth is, it’s hard for some people to reconnect sexually when they have been distanced for a period of time. Heck I have known couples that have not had sex in years and years. Now, that is sad. Learning how to begin having sex at all is a start that can be really hard in and of itself.

Intimacy

Ed Young says it reveals your true self to your partner when you are having sex. Well, yes, I can see how that is true. If you are insecure that is going to show up in the bedroom. If you are fearful of intimacy you it will show up there.

How do you overcome all the blocks? Ed Young has a lot of good thing to say about that but I have to say, he’s not a mental health expert so he might be missing some of the more subtle points.

Bottom line is that he’s right in some really important ways and I am glad he’s opened up this topic in such a pubic way. Intimacy and sex have been separated so much in our culture but research has shown that even men (whom most people think of as being able separate sex from emotions) need emotional intimacy to reach peak sexual enjoyment. Getting to deep sexual intimacy is often complicated, but oh, is it ever worth it. Should be some happy faces at next Sunday's service!

What do you think?

Is it a crazy idea to have sex every day? Is it possible to be unselfish and giving to our partners sexually to the extent of having sex every day? Comment below!

Politics is high drama. It relies on the Drama Triangle to label the good guys and the bad guys and prove we are the wronged victims. We are entitled to do whatever we need to regain our stature, property, or rights. Obama used it, McCain used it. So did Napoleon, Hitler, Yamomoto, Churchill, and the Roosevelts. Sadly, they have to because it works.

Concession speeches usually fan the dying embers of their cause’s victimhood. They aim to bank the fire so it can be used to ignite the next run for office.

As Barack Obama said in his victory speech, there are few who have endured more than John McCain. I don’t know how you survive the hatred and inhumanity of nearly dying in the Hanoi Hilton. But McCain did. And he was a driving force for establishing economic and political relations with his former captors. He escaped the usually life long handicap of wallowing in his mistreatment by letting go of his victimhood and forgiving his captors.

He showed his character again last night. His concession speech was not about him or his cause. Respect and admiration for Obama were evident in his words and his actions. This is the McCain that we have known and respected for decades, whether you think he should be president or not. America made a choice. They didn’t pick him. Still, he doesn’t see himself as a victim. How many of us could say the same?

Only a few of us think that the way we participate in sexual activity is addictive, but often the beginnings of sexual addictions show up in covert ways that we may miss if we are not attentive. I just spent three days at a symposium on addiction and the speakers there reminded me of just how ubiquitous sexual additions are in our society.

Most of the time I tend to think of men as the ones harboring secret sexual addictions but, of course, women are just as subject to sexual addictions as men. We really are not that different, are we?

Strangely, most sexual addictions have little to do with sex, other than the fact that the behaviors take place in the context of sexuality. Exhibitionism is really about wanting to feel the power of having shocked someone. Pornography is about fantasy. Most of the others, like sadomasochistic fetishes are all about regaining a sense of power and control. Strangely enough, even the avoidance of sex can be a “addictive” behavior according to Maureen Canning of the Meadows Treatment Center.

The end of athletic sex

As a wife who avoided sex over the course of many years of my previous marriages, this one got my attention. I was, as many women are, quite able to enjoy a courtship and “honeymoon” phase of an active and athletic sex life during the beginning phases of my relationships. But, as the relationship moved out of the fantasy stage and into the reality of a real, day to day set of interactions, sex disappeared. It didn’t disappear because my husband wasn’t interested. No, it disappeared because I became angry and disgusted with his continuing to be happy with sex as the lifeblood of our relationship. Once we were married I think I expected our relationship to magically blossom into a real intimate connection. Never mind that I had no clue how to do that. But I was certain it was my husbands fault because HE was such an angry, avoidant, workaholic. Certainly I was the innocent victim of his deliberate withholding of time, attention and kindness. So, I withheld sexual contact from him because I was so angry with him. I never thought of it as being addictive behavior.

Pervasive addictions

But if you re-frame how you think about what addiction is, you can easily see how it really is an addictive process. As Maureen Canning says, most sexual addiction is really about power and control. I was clearly attempting to get a sense of power in the relationship by moving into the Self-Protective withdrawal position. I put up barriers to prevent myself from feeling vulnerable to his angry, avoidant behaviors. I did this in an attempt to get power and control over feeling like his Victim.

How many wives do this? I asked Maureen if she new of any other resources for information about this form of addiction she calls “Sexual Anorexia” and she directed me to a book by Patrick Carnes. I have not yet gotten a copy of the book but I do think it’s fascinating.

Offensive behaviors

A lot of unhappy husbands will probably relate to this scenario. Maureen talked about the “offending” quality of this behavior. I have to admit I never would have thought of myself as doing any “offending” by this behavior, but I was clearly damaging my relationship. The word offending does bring up legal or even criminal meaning, but one simple definition is “wrong”. And it was indeed “wrong” of me to withhold sex in order to meet my own power and control needs.

But don’t you offending men take heart at this either, because addictive relationships generally require two addicts. The partners to the Sexual Anorexic are obviously the “Co-dependant” in the relationship and just as addicted in their own way. One partner is generally a “Sex Addict” and the other is the “Sexual Anorexic”. Both are just opposite ends of the spectrum from the other.

The more classic “Sex Addict” is the one who gets a sense of power and control by engaging in some form of sexual activity. Of course, the sex act itself is mood enhancing and can be a way to alter an unhappy mood.

Where is the real problem?

Sex is not meant to be about power and control or even mood enhancing. Sex is supposed to be intimate, passionate play with your partner. Any other covert use for it is “wrong” or “offensive”. If passionate play is not how either of you experience your sexual relationship then there is a problem.

So what do you do if you are using sex addictively?

First of all you have to just recognize that you are using sex (or your sexual power as in Sexual Anorexia) in a way that is harmful to your relationship. Once you recognize what you are doing you have to stop the offensive behavior and deal with the feelings that are buried underneath the behavior. This can be a simple but uncomfortable process, or it can be a complex and debilitating one. If you begin the process of eliminating your sexual addictive behaviors and find yourself feeling overwhelmed – don’t hesitate to call a professional because, like any addiction, if it is severe enough it can be life threatening. No joke, the feelings underneath the sexual addictions can be very intense and lead to severe withdrawal symptoms. Take care of yourself as you open your eyes to how you may have been unwittingly causing harm to your relationship.

Any addictions on your part?

Let me know what you think or if you can relate. Comment below.

Stay or Go?

That’s the question addressed in the series of short stories about women struggling in a bad relationships. Each of these stories have different women, different relationship issues, and different outcomes. What is the red threat that holds these stories together?

I guess O thought it was the fact that these women all struggled to find themselves and to muster the courage to do what was right for them, whether it be addressing problems head on and fixing the relationship or leaving.

Egocentric positions

The interesting thing to me is how much egocentrism existed in each of these articles. Each woman felt they were alone in their marriage, and the decision was up to them. Each flailed about on their own with the decision instead of recognizing the issue as being about a lack of intimacy that was present in the marriage, not just the man.

My own choices

I remember making similar choices twice before in my life. My first to marriages were stuck in a battle for each of our survival and neither of us fared well in the process. Growth as an individual is impossible if the marriage is not growing too, but growth of the individual is magnified if growth is happening in the marriage.

Making unilateral decisions every day

The funny thing is that in unhealthy relationships we make unilateral decisions about the marriage every day, sometimes every minute. How do we do that? We do that by becoming reactive to our partner and putting up barriers to hold them away from us emotionally. Sometimes it’s all we can muster. I get that. I lived that. But if we are to push for something more than just mere survival we have to be more compassionate.

What compassion really means

Being compassionate means that we stop seeing our partner as the enemy, the “bad guy”, the “wrong” one. It means we accept that all of us are not perfect, including us. When we do that there is a chance of really experiencing closeness, and perhaps even great sex. It changes everything!

What do you think?

Are there times when you just have to accept that your partner is in the wrong and keep your protective boundaries up? Comment below.

The relatable factor

It has been said of Sarah Palin that women relate to her. She is pretty, strong, and hard headed. She has a lot of qualities that we’d like our mom’s to have, and that we would like to be ourselves: confident, sure of our words, and unapologetic for our beliefs and public behaviors. She is a wife, a mother with five children and a job.

Hilary Clinton only had one child and her life was her work. They have made very different choices, and very different perceptions by the pubic.

Working moms, the media would have us believe, relate with a mom who shoots wolves from a helicopter and risks our child’s health by flying eight hours across the country after our water broke. Maybe she is more relatable and personable than Hilary.

Unfair standards

She is being judged by perhaps unfair standards, as any woman running for public office still is today. She is expected to as the song says “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan” and still look gorgeous in the process. She does all of that. And she isn’t afraid to stand up for what she believes in either.

I think it is less that we relate with her than that we would like to be like her. Hilary seemed so severe and took the second seat next to her oh-so-charming husband. How many of us even know what Palin’s husband looks like? We like the idea that we could be all of those things and still be liked. Hilary Clinton struggled to do all of those things and still be liked. A lot of people ended up liking her, but it didn’t come easily to her. She never was gorgeous and a super mom in the way of Sarah Palin.

Good guys and bad guys

When we are in our usual mode of trying to decide who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy” it’s easy to confuse likable with “good”. It’s easy to confuse “like me” with “good” and “not like me” with “bad”. We all feel more comfortable with these easy categories. When we can sort people out by simple categories and selecting “good” and “bad” based on them. Funny thing is, I can understand this because it is how our brains work. But that doesn’t make for rational judgments based on the things that really matter.

The cute guy in class

I remember when I was a teen falling for the cutest guy in my class. He was funny, personable and had the best bone structure. I flushed every time he came near and longed for his attention. My entire perception of his desirability was based on how he appeared. He was in the “good” category. He ended up dropping out from ninth grade and spending, last I heard, five years in the federal penitentiary for drug dealing.

Choosing with a different part of our brain

While our primitive survival instincts will have us pick and sort based on these simple groupings… they don’t really help us in our modern world. Choosing a candidate for President of these United States must be done based on something beyond are they “like me” or not. Granted that is our instinct. But should instincts prevail in our choices? Or should we pick based on something out of our more evolved, cognitive mind?

Being able to choose to do anything based on our more evolved, higher brain functions seems imperative to me as a human being, and even more so as a citizen of a free country with a right to vote. We have a responsibility to use our choices wisely and with our more evolved brain. It changes everything.

How it seems to me

We must pick our candidate based on what they show us about what they are capable of doing and being, not just whether they are perceived as being a “good guy” “like me” or not.

What do you think?

Should we vote based on or emotional reactions? Are these valid points or am I off base? Let me know. Comment below.

For the past couple of years I’ve been writing articles for Dan and Jennifer of the askdanandjennifer.com website. Lucky for me they live close by and Mike and I have had dinner with them a couple of times and I now consider them to be friends. They are a great, generous, and hardworking couple of kids. I’m proud to know them. They have an interesting website but – be warned they deal with a lot of sexual material. I personally think this is good thing because they answer a lot of people’s questions about things that are hard to get good answers about.

The Forum Questions

In the past couple of months I’ve been answering a lot of their forum questions – in fact I’ve been doing more of that then writing articles. It’s as fascinating thing to do because it gets to the hear of what intimacy means to people. Of course, sex and intimacy are not the same thing – but to most people they are deeply connected.

So many of us seem to have trouble with intimacy and sex simply because we are stuck in the fear based reactions of the Cycle of Egocentrism. Our old brain reactivity kicks in and we loose sight of ourselves and our partner.

Not so silly message

I watched a silly movie with my daughter yesterday, “Waitress”. It had the guy from “Serenity” (Nathan Fillion) in it so my daughter wanted to watch it. It was not all that well written and had a seriously slow pace, but it was cute. Two things struck me about this movie though. The first is that the waitress’s husband, Earl, (played by Jeremy Sisto) was painted as being a “bad husband” from the beginning of the film. The waitress, played by Keri Russell, never had one bit of empathy for him. Now, I’ll concede he was a painfully difficult person; he was somewhat abusive and controlling. But as the movie progressed it became clear he was also in a lot of pain, and horribly incapable of knowing how to connect with his beautiful, uncommunicative wife. When the waitress did connect with someone it was with a married man (Nathan Fillion) who was also her OB-GYN. This relationship contrasted with that of her marriage by showing her new lover as being emotionally caring, and sensitive to her feelings. During the narration she did she stated that she realized how great it felt to have someone really listen to her like what she felt and thought mattered to them. Obviously her husband didn’t have that gift.

Clueless men and dissatisfied wives

I bring this movie up because it reminded me so much of some of the questions sent in to the forum on Dan and Jennifer’s website. Clueless men asking why their wives have no interest in sex anymore and dissatisfied wives seeking out connections with other men because their own husbands don’t know how to connect with them emotionally.

“Bad guys”

Now, I realize how I just framed things makes it look like it’s the guys fault for not being emotionally available. The truth is that it’s not their fault, and it’s not entirely about them not being able. Men are frequently raised to hold all sign of emotions inside and are not given a vocabulary with which to express their feelings. They are not supposed to need any kind of affection or nurturing from anyone past about the age of three. Then we marry them and suddenly they are expected to know how to give and receive nurturing and to talk about feelings; and if they don’t they are a “bad husband”.

When we put people in categories of “bad” and “good” were are limiting them – and ourselves – as human beings. And it absolves us of any responsibility for what occurs when we label someone else as the “bad” one.

My “bad guys”

I did this during my first two marriages. I was caught up in seeing how “bad” my husbands were at being husbands. I believed I was the innocent victim wanting intimacy with men who were incapable of expressing it. I had no desire for sex with them because I didn’t feel the least bit connected with them. And that, I believed, was because of them.

What I know now is that they and I came into the marriage with baggage from our pasts. We all do. And I was no more capable of intimacy than they were. I had to learn how to be empathetic for them, and for myself, in order to allow myself to experience the intimacy I so desperately wanted. To do that I had to let go of the belief in “good” and “bad” guys. Getting out of what I call the Cycle of Egocentrism changes everything.

Is there a “bad guy” in your life?

Tell me what you think? Comment below.

O Magazine published an article in September about the difficulties women have with saying what they want. It was a silly, fun article with references to words I don’t believe are really words (like “wanty”) but it hit home.

We have all been bred to keep what we really want to ourselves. It’s what I would call a “Victim” reaction to having desires because one sure way to never get what you want is to never let anyone know what it is you really do want. But how many of us men or women, have spent most of our lives trying to guess what others want and how to avoid saying what we want?

Hiding starts early

Case in point my own desire, from an early age, to play the piano. I guess I never came out and told anyone but I know that any time I got near I played on it. If the other kids were playing outside, eating ice cream, or any other fun activity - if there was a piano around, I was playing it instead. So I was amazed when my mother said she never knew I wanted to play.

My own inability to say what I want has shaped my life in many ways. I am not sure how I learned the lesson, but I obviously did.

Emotions make it harder

Now, don’t get me wrong its not that I can never say what I want, because that is not true. I have learned to ask for what I want from waiters, cashiers, and other service people. I can even ask my friends to do things with me. But, if it is something that has some kind of emotional weight, it has not always been easy.

Women get the impression you are pushy if you make it clear what you want and don’t back down at the first sign of dissent. We get labeled as “bitchy” if we insist on getting what we want. Of course, men, in similar situations would be considered “strong”. But I don’t think men are any better, over all than women at asking for what they really want. Emotional things, things that would seem to make them “weak” are strictly forbidden for men to ask.

Divorce and truth telling

It’s no wonder our divorce rate is so high. Because if we remain in a place of being unable to communicate what we want and need from our partners we are stuck in the helpless, Victim, position with no hope of escape. Unless of course our partner is astute enough to glean what it is we want from our manipulative behaviors. Of course, hiding our sexual reality has become such a commonplace thing that according to a Lavalife survey even 53% of men fake orgasms (82% of women do).

Rescuers often can figure out what their partners want, but we don’t always get it exactly right. Guess work is like that, sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t.

Taking ownership of our wants and needs is the only hope we have of really getting what we want instead of some close approximation. Our partner’s may be pretty good, but nobody can always guess right.

Do you know what you want?

Someone commented on the O Magazine article that she had not addressed the whole issue because she hadn’t addressed how you even KNOW what it is you want. A lot of us are so out of touch with ourselves, our bodies and our emotions that we have no clue what we want. That makes it even tougher to ask doesn’t it?

Learning to connect with our bodies and emotions is the first step in being able to identify what we want and need. I love the series Mad Men on AMC. It portrays the social environment that set us up to never say what we want or know what it is we need. My favorite characters are the mysterious Dan Draper and his wife Betty. Dan (not his real name but, that’s the identity he assumed) doesn’t have a clue what he feels and is constantly in search of something that will make him feel something. Betty, his sweet, picturesque wife is equally clueless because she is not supposed to need or want anything other than the house and home that Dan provides her. Betty reminds me of my own mother during that period, dressing up to look the part, but always a bit out of place.

Isn’t that how we all feel when we deny ourselves awareness of what we want and need? Learning connect with our bodies and emotions and then being courageous enough to speak our truths changes everything.

What are you not saying?

Almost everyone hold things back from their partners. Do you? What do you not like to say? Do you tell your friends what you do and don’t want? Your family? I’d love to hear. Comment below.

Trading Sex for Jungle Tour

I read this great article today on CNN about how this college student, now a chocolate store owner, convinced a local African to take her into the jungle to live for two weeks. She had been unable to find a paid guide to take her, but this young man liked her looks. She didn’t particularly like his, but she didn’t care. She traded two weeks of sex for two weeks in the jungle. It turned out to be a great deal, she felt it more than worth the price.

The Powerof Sex to Get Things Done

The article goes on to talk about how a lot of women trade sex for services. The classic having sex with your handyman was the most obvious example. Though the article traced these types of trades back to ancient Egypt when Cleopatra “cemented her power” through having sexual relations with Roman rulers.

Biology of the Trade

The final paragraph in the article talks about the whole premise of trading sex for services being driven by biology. Dr. Chris Fariello, director of the Institute for Sex Therapy at the Council for Relationships, a nonprofit relationship-counseling group based in Philadelphia, says a partner who provides more resources -- wealth, shelter, home repairs -- is seen as more attractive and stands to reap more sexual rewards. But until I got to the last line, I didn’t really get why having sex with your handyman was more than just a funny cliché. As Fariello puts it, "I don't get anybody in my office who says, 'My husband sits on the couch all day and eats bonbons, and I want to have sex with him all the time.”

What Does This Say About US?

This made me laugh out loud. But then I thought about what it is really saying. What this is saying is that our pre-programmed biological drive is to have a mate who takes ownership of their life and surroundings – and is capable of doing so. Whether male or female we have to add value to our partner in some form. Men are easier because they have such a strong biological drive for sex, but women, too need a man who adds something to her life. Men have often twisted that to mean (perhaps because of our American cultural emphasis on money) that if they don’t make a lot of money they can’t get a hot wife.

What this article makes clear is that women and men need the same thing - someone who adds value to their life. That could mean money, but then why do so many well-supported women give up married life in order to pursue something else? Obviously money is NOT it! Women want a man who does more that “sits on the couch all day eat(ing) bonbons.” We are biologically driven to find a man willing to take ownership of their life and surroundings. It changes everything. I’ve always said there is nothing sexier than a man standing in front of the sink with a sink full of dirty dishes and his sleeves rolled up. We want a man who is willing to work… Of course, what men want from us is a whole different article.

To be completely honest, that describes me to a T. My first husband was worthless, didn’t even feel that he needed to earn income, much less contribute around the house or with our baby. My second worked hard but contributed nothing to my needs, making our home or caring for our daughters. Now I have married a man who works harder than I do at keeping our home and family together. I’m crazy about him. Who knew it was biology?

What do you think?

Do you ever think you would trade your skill for sex or sex for a skill? I'd love to hear if you have nor have not, and what you think about it.

Who is to blame?

In a what her lawyer refers to as a “silly” case involving Joel Olsteens’ wife, Victoria, a litigious flight attendant has filed charges against Mrs. Olsteen. The flight attendant, Sharon Brown, claims injury after Mrs. Olsteen allegedly pushed her against the bathroom door and elbowed her breast. Mrs. Olsteen was apparently upset that her flight attendants had not attended her so well. Someone had spilled a liquid on the arm of her first class seat and none of the attendants would anything about it. Reportedly, Mrs. Olsteen became quite upset and demanded some attention to her needs.

I love this kind of thing because it so clearly illustrates how even the (apparently) most evolved of us can get triggered into primitive responses and look like idiots. Now, I don’t know if Mrs. Olsteen actually did as Ms Brown claims, but clearly the women were upset. Neither of them chose to respond, both were, rather clearly operating from a survival mechanism that resulted in both feeling hurt and angry.

Survival mode

When this kind of primitive response kicks in our brains don’t work so well. Ms Brown has apparently been involved in other disputes of this kind so I am guessing she has a bit of the Self-Protector in her and doesn’t have a clue how this impacts other people. Not that it justifies the reported behavior of Mrs. Olsteen. But it does help us understand and have some empathy for her frustration.

I can picture it now. The beautiful and extremely well dressed Victoria Olsteen gets on a plane expecting to be comfortable and well taken care of as is reportedly the usual case in first class (though I certainly wouldn’t know for sure). She sits down in an outfit that is undoubtedly worth more than everything in my entire closet combined and discovers something on the arm of her chair that could ruin her designer garb. She asks for help since this is not really her territory; it’s the flight attendants. Yet she gets no response. She can’t get comfortable and knows she will not be able to relax until the foreign substance is removed. She asks for help again and now she is getting panicked. How is she going to manage to be in a plane for (however long) and relax?

The flight attendant, Ms Brown, obviously rushed, and stressed views Mrs. Olsteen as an obstacle to her goal of getting the flight off the ground. Both went into Self-Protect mode firing angry reactivity toward each other and hurting each other’s feelings.

At any point if one or the other had been able to contain their reactivity and have some empathy for the other person the whole incident could have been avoided. Of course, the onus to be responsible for the incident really lies with Ms Brown as a representative of the airline and a servant to the people on her flight.

A need for compassion

It seems to me that both of these women could use a course in the practice of compassion. Once they both moved into a place of empathy, respect and ownership the whole necessity of legal action would be removed. If Mrs. Olsteen did physically assault Ms Brown than she needs to apologize and take ownership of her part, but so does Ms Brown. Her job as a flight attendant to first class riders is to be there to take care of them.

Clearly she failed to do that. If there was no assault (only the other witnesses on the flight can say for sure) it would behoove Mrs. Olsteen to listen with empathy to what could have provoked this legal attack on her. Perhaps Ms Brown is financially stressed and saw this as an opportunity to help her recover financially from some terrible financial problem. Perhaps Ms Brown wanted to please Mrs. Olsteen and was hurt at how angry Mrs. Olsteen was by her failure to respond. Whatever the cause, both women own a part in what happened and if that is not recognized in the legal process it certainly should be in some kind of moral or ethical sense. I hope the Olsteens can recognize this because it changes everything. Once you allow yourself to step into compassion and out of the egocentric combatant role everything changes.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear what you think of this. Do you think Mrs. Olsteen was the bad actor in this case, or is this a case of overblown litigiousness? Did Ms Brown fall short of her job duties and cry foul to save her job? Comment below.

Our summer guest

This summer my family has had the delight of hosting a college student during his Internship at a law firm in Downtown Dallas. We live out side of Dallas in Lewisville. It’s a good 45 minutes to downtown from here, so we had tried to find him a host closer to his work. Fortunately for us, we were unsuccessful.

Though our four bedroom house is already was already bursting at the seams, Alex came to stay with us in the middle of June. Three of our four daughters and our son have been in and out of the house all summer. Heather was still here, until July 1^st, when she started her own Internship for Samsung Mobile Fresh Films. Jenny came home at the end of May, as did Hayley. Jenny was returning from a study abroad in London and Hayley graduated from UTSA. Jenny set off to Australia for yet another study abroad on July 15^th. Hayley has been working part time and looking to find her first “real job”. Meanwhile, Wayne has been here for two weeks at a time, plus some, over the summer. Heather has completed her Internship and is home, now about to graduate from UNT in a week. All of this never rattled Alex, in fact, he seems to have enjoyed the comings and goings of all our crew.

Alex

I don’t even know where to start when talking about Alex. Someone I met with yesterday said “Our kids are just as great when they are guests at someone else’s home.” Well, I certainly hope so! Alex has been cheerful, childlike and yet so grown up all at the same time. He has gotten us to have more sit-down meals together than we have had in all the nine years Mike and I have been married. He participates in these meals, too, volunteering to help cook, set the table and clean afterwards. Some nights he comes in wanting to “bake something” an makes us a cake, crepes, or pudding or something. Every night he brings with him his sweet nature and bright energy.

Every morning he gets up, puts on his freshly laundered white shirt, tie and suit. He has a bowl of cereal and heads for downtown at about 7:45. I can’t say I am always up when he is preparing to leave but when I am, he greets me with his bright “Good morning” and chatter about the toils of going to work for sometimes 14 hours a day. When he gets home early enough he takes a long walk or bike ride. One Saturday afternoon he was bored and cleaned out and rearranged our entire pantry. Another he sat down and made a paper mach¢e bowl. Other times he sits out by the pool or in the park reading. He has also made the best of his time here by exploring area attractions and events. He went to the Dallas Symphony one night, to the Arboretum, to Fair Park and to Sundance Square and the Ft Worth Zoo. He often went to the store for something for himself and either picked up something for us unasked, or thoughtfully asked if there was something he could pick up. Somewhere along in there he took a hold of our hearts.

Stressful summer

It has been a stressful summer anyway, and he has kept us cheerful throughout the difficulties. I became ill going out to California for Athena’s graduation from Law School at the start of the summer. We went to Kerrville New Folk for our annual trip and or fellow Kerrvillian Ronzo died of a heart attack. Mike had a horrible spasm in his shoulder one night and we spent the entire night in the ER. Then I came down with a case of Shingles. Just as I was recovering from the Shingles I underwent a minor operation to remove a pre-cancerous cyst on my side. And of course, we moved my things out of my office, and re-arranged two entire rooms of our house to accommodate my things. Alex helped us with it all, even scrubbing the office floor on his hands and knees to remove the gunk left by the lining used to keep the (now removed) rug from slipping on the wood floor.

Yesterday was Mike’s birthday and he is the only one- none of our kids - got him a card. And last night he got me a huge bag of Sour Patch Kids (my one real vice.)

The gift

When Jenny left for Australia, he got her a gift as his “host” for the summer (it was her friend from NYU that asked Jenny to find Alex a place). Jenny thought he would get Mike and I something, too. At the time I thought, “Wow, that’s completely unnecessary. Alex has been such a gift to us- we should get him something.”

He is leaving tomorrow and I am not ready! I didn’t fully understand how much I am not ready until I woke up this morning crying. I had a dream about his leaving in which he gave us each a gift card as a going away gift, and I handed mine back to him. I told him, “You don’t have to do this because you have been such a gift to us.” Then I put my arms around him and started to cry, I said. “We don’t want you to go!”

I woke up sobbing, Mike heard me and put his arms around me. It was then I realized how close Alex is to the age Lance would have been now. Alex is 19 and Lance would be 20. Saying good-bye to Alex feels like saying good-bye to Lance. Lance was seven weeks old when he dies of Sudden Infant Death.

Oh, I get it now

Coincidentally I am closing my office today. It marks the beginning of my moving into a new career path. Oh, I will still be seeing some clients in another office, but the move is a clearly defined moment of moving my career path. And my counseling career has been a kind of monument to Lance. It was after he died that I went back to school and got my degree in Counseling. For me, it was a way to make some meaning out of his passing. The coincidental convergence of these two losses in one day is strangely poetic. I let go of both my “monument” to Lance and (while I wasn’t consciously aware of it) an adult representation of of who Lance might have been in the form of Alex.

I don't know how to say good-bye

As I write this he is upstairs getting ready for his last day at his Internship. We are leaving tonight, probably before he gets home, for my 35^th (yes, that’s right, 35^th) High School Reunion. So I will say my good-bye this in a few minutes with a bittersweet pain in my heart.

BYE ALEX!

Searching out the bad guys

Who’s to blame? That’s what we all want to know isn’t it. When something goes wrong our primitive nature seeks out the source of the crime. We want to know who or what is to blame so that we can put the whole issue to rest. Whatever the issue.

Last weeks Newsweek contained an article by Stuart Taylor Jr. about how looking for blame in regard to the problem of torturing suspected war criminals in the United States military over the past seven years cannot be approached this way. He has gotten some flack from readers about his no blame approach. But I think he is 100% correct.

The pattern of blame

When we spend all our time in search of the bad guy, trying to figure out who should go to jail, who should be prosecuted. People always automatically go into Self-Protector mode. This causes anyone involved to go behind a veil of silence, protecting them from possible trouble that could result if they were to come clean.

At this point the government has prosecuted only those at the lowest level of the abuse; those acting under orders in an atmosphere encouraging such behavior.

Should they have known better?

Sure, but then again, so should those prosecuting them.

The problem, as Taylor points out, is a systemic problem that cannot be solved merely by pointing fingers. In fact as those involved fear for their freedom and their careers will band together to protect themselves from harm. Wouldn’t you?

Our survival nuture

It is our nature, when under attack, to fight for our survival. The problem is that because we live in a world where nothing exists except Self-Protectors, Victims and Rescuers then Taylor must be seen as a Rescuer. Victims don’t like Rescuers who are rescuing the perceived perpetrator.

Is this Rescuing?

Rescuing is when you take over, with no respect for the other, and hold them irresponsible for their deeds. This is NOT what Taylor is calling for at all.

Taylor’s premise is that we must examine the problem from inside the system, recognizing that something went wrong in the system and holding each person accountable for their part, but not to “blame”. Giving everyone involved immunity allows us to step back and look at the whole problem of how this travesty occurred in our supposedly “free” American society.

Any other approach leads to more secrecy, more scapegoats, and more travesties.

Practicing Compassion

Coming from a compassionate place where we recognize that within a system where abuse is as normal as eating, finding blame is useless. It’s like the whole dysfunctional family trend of the early ‘90’s. We’re miserable, so who’s to blame? Why our parents of course! Anyone who survived this period of time in psychotherapy will attest to what this cost them personally within their family systems.

Practicing compassion means holding people accountable without blaming them for the entire blame. Certainly no one person made the decision to allow the kinds of tortures we have read about since the beginning of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Respecting that each person within the system did what they thought was correct, legal actions at the time; we allow them to speak of how the horrors came to be. We have empathy for how difficult it might have been to have broken from the status quo to protest. In doing this own that what happened should not have happened and take ownership of preventing any further, similar horrors to occur.

Compassion requires allow us to be human beings. It allows us to make mistakes, yet holds us accountable for our behavior. It changes how we perceive everything.

Should we pursue the bad guys

What do you think? Am I off base? Is Taylor? I know some of you have to be irate at the thought of “letting them off” for such awful deeds. Tell me what you think. Comment below.

The Cycles and Teachers

Today I talked to a group of teachers about how the Cycles can work for them in their classrooms, with their administrators and within their own families. I was touched to tears as I told them of an experience I had with my Third Grade teacher, Agnes Conner who recognized the pain I was in and began helping me see value in myself. She did it incrementally, respectfully, empathetically allowing me to see that there was something in this life for me.

As I talked to them I realized what a hard job they have. Now, understand, I come from a family of teachers and know how hard they work and how little they get financially compensated for the most important job in the world next to parenting (also not financially compensated for). But today I thought about the task of trying to model the Cycles path for their students and with administrators whom have lost sight of their real task. One woman talked about how the current head of the Houston school district was hired after having bankrupt Corpus Christie’s school district. This administrator increased his own salary by 9%, she said, and then he told all the teachers in the district not to expect any raises in from 3-5 years. Next he started building stadiums and new schools and laying off teachers. Talk about failing to take ownership of the realities of the needs of the district!

Are the Cycles “Christian based?”

But in the middle of her frustration she turned to me and said “This is not Christian based is it?” I had ask why she asked that question. She said it is because at some point in my presentation she got chills and it sank in that the Cycles of the Heart is exactly what Christ taught. I hugged her and thanked her for seeing the heart of the model so clearly.

The practice of Compassion is more than understanding the words.

My Spiritual Path

I remember an experience I had at the age of 13. I had been exploring Christianity since I was nine, having walked across the street to the United Methodist Church to attend Sunday School by myself because my family didn’t attend, though my Mom said we were “Methodists”. By 13 I had developed a healthy spiritual life of my own and had read the Bible and learned to pray in a way that felt connected and had a real relationship with Jesus and God. One morning after a long prayer session I suddenly felt a calling to be a minister. I thought, “I’m a girl! And I’m only 13! How is that supposed to happen?”

Well, I did what I could. By this point I had really gotten a sense of what God is and that I could take it literally that “God is Love” as Jesus so often told. It became a sort of mission for me to express this newfound wisdom with the people I knew.

An opportunity arose for me to share this with my Sunday school class. Each of us were assigned to be in charge of a lesson for the class. One week a boy in the class brought popular music and talked about how this music drove people to use drugs and about how, as Christians we could not let the music induce us into that world. I was inspired to teach my lesson of love. I brought in some great popular music at the time about love. I don’t recall what songs I used, but it was 1969 so there was no shortage of music about love. I wrote a slew of poetry expressing my own feelings about the importance of and need for, Love in our lives. I dimmed the lights, lit incense, played the music and read my poetry. The room was filled with titters and inattentiveness. Of course, in retrospect I am certain these 13, 14 and 15 year olds could not yet hear what I was trying to communicate.

Teaching something foriegn

This is of course what the middle and high school teachers I talked to this morning are dealing with themselves. But now, unlike then, I understand the blocks to being able to express love and to be compassionate. The Cycles of the Heart is a model that clearly lays out a path to being able to practice the compassion that Christ, Budda, Mohamed, the Dali Lama and all the other great Spiritual teachers have taught. So I guess, as it turns out I am a “minister” of sorts, teaching people compassion.

The greatest Spiritual goal

It is the practical application of how to achieve the greatest Spiritual goal of being a compassionate person. Understanding the Cycles of the Heart and practicing it inside of ourselves and outside of ourselves in our relationships, in our workplace, our communities and in our world we really can “change everything!”

What do you think?

I know I have not blogged in a while. I’ve been going through some re-grouping of my life and professional direction in the past couple of weeks. It has not been easy and will not be an easy change, but it is absolutely what is right for me and ultimately, everyone.

I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what you think about what you know about the power of compassion or how you have applied the Cycles of the Heart to your life.

Five Deaths

I don’t know what drew me to the article. I don’t usually read these kinds of things too closely, they tend to resemble to closely the stories I hear in my therapy office. But today, I read an article in the Dallas Morning News about this family that died in a car crash this past week. Well, they weren’t really a family exactly. The couple, Geoff and Christy Hart had taken in three foster children who were in the car with them at the time of the crash. Maybe it was the fact that they were foster children that got my attention.

Evil Choices to blame?

The police said the guy driving the car that hit them could be put up on criminal charges because he was apparently driving way over the posted speed limit of 40mph when he plowed into their car. Senior minister Dr. Ronald D. Henderson said, “What happened was neither of God nor the devil. It is the result of evil in the world. It is the result of choices people make."

Of course the guy driving the Pontiac that hit the Hart’s car made some bad choices: fatal choices. But just saying he made bad choices doesn’t really explain what happened does it? Why in the world would someone be driving like that on a residential street?

The back story

Today’s Dallas Morning News reports that the driver of the Pontiac, police now say, was David Calhoun Jones, age 46. He is in critical condition himself and being treated at an area hospital. According the Dallas Morning News, “WFAA-TV reported that police said Jones, of Metarie, La., was running late to pick up his own children from his ex-wife when the crash occurred.”

Wouldn’t most of us be careful if we want to live to see our children? Perhaps we would, but what if there were a strong reason to have to hurry? In my experiences many ex-wives are so stuck in the Victim role with their ex-husbands that they become very difficult to deal with reasonably. So what they do is lash out in whatever aggressive or passive aggressive ways they can come up with to hurt their ex-husbands. They of course, then, become the Self-Protector, trying to get control over their feelings of being out of control.

The Cycle at work

What if Jone’s wife had a history of yelling at the kids if Jone’s was late? Or perhaps she would even refuse him access to his kids if he were as much as five minutes late? It was obviously important to Jones that he arrive on time to see his kids. I’d love to know the back story about what made it so urgent that he had to drive so extremely fast to try to get there on time. Making the right choices is not always as simple as it might seem.

If understand how the Cycle of Egocentrism works it changes everything in how we perceive what happens to us and in the world.

What do you think?

Ever felt that kind of pressure from an angry ex? Tell me your story, or just tell me what you think! Comment below.

Do you have an Empathy Deficit Disorder?

On Oprah.com there was a great article this week about empathy. The author of the article (Amanda Robb) reported that her own empathy deficit became obvious to her in her twenties after an incident with a roommate loosing her job. It seems this roommate had rich parents and, unlike the author, didn’t really have to worry about money. So when the roommate lost her job the Amanda responded with “"You'll have an amazing story for Jim's party tonight!"

Egocentrism

Amanda, it seems turned to therapy to get help for her problem relationships and began to learn about empathy from her then therapist. It was not an easy road for her because from childhood she had never experienced empathy from anyone. Her father’s death at age four sent her mother scrambling to provide for Amanda and her siblings, leaving little time for such fluff as emotions.

Moving toward Empathy

But Amanda did learn that to escape the egocentric world she lived in before empathy she had to go through a lot of grief. She says, “About six months into psychotherapy, I started using what I thought of as my therapist's ‘lines,” instead of saying her automatic egocentric responses. Still, she had taken the first steps toward empathy: faking it.

“If you want to act more empathetic, you follow certain steps: Instead of telling people what they ought to do, or becoming tyrannically optimistic, you offer sympathy, inquire about feelings, and validate those feelings. You'll be giving comfort to the other person, even if you yourself can't feel what they're going through.” Robb says.

The Wall of Grief

At first this worked to improve her relationships, and she was happy with that until one day, Robb says, “I began feeling something intensely when comforting friends: terror.” She was for the first time beginning to feel empathy for someone else. But to feel empathy we first have to walk through what I call “The Wall of Grief” which is first characterized by the terror Robb described. While finding empathy “profoundly uncomfortable” she acknowledges that it is the ‘emotional connective tissue” that keeps us from feeling alone.

The path to compassion for others and for ourselves is to walk through that discomfort and to be brave enough to let ourselves feel the terror, anger and grief that comes with “The Wall of Grief”.

The Rewards

Robb says, “If you have a romantic partner, he or she will someday believe that you are entirely wrong about something, and if you can see the problem from your partner's point of view, you'll be able to get through that conflict without smoldering in the corner or splitting up. If you work with someone you despise (and who despises you back), and you try to understand why that person dislikes you, then you stand a chance of not hating every minute with her at the office. If you live in a world that you would like to see less divided by ethnic, economic, and religious strife, you'll find that attempting to comprehend the needs of your sworn enemies is a prerequisite to any meaningful action you can take.”

The path to Compassion

This is the path to compassion: the painful, rewarding, joy of allowing ourselves to feel connected to others. It is something we have to learn, it is not something that comes natural to us. The natural thing is to stay in the “Cycle of Egocentrism” and fighting for our survival against others also fighting for their survival. The unnatural process of allowing in the feelings the Cycle of Egocentrism keeps us from feeling takes courage and commitment. The path to experiencing the compassion that is the result of that courage is the Cycle of Compassion: Empathy, Ownership and Respect.

The simple words do not convey the difficulty of the process but can simplify our understanding of path to compassion. But learning to practice the Cycle of Compassion changes everything.

Comments?

Have you had or do you have EDD?? Do you know someone who suffers from it? What has that been like for you? Let me know what you think. Comment below.

Welcome Home!

Since 1971 Kerrville has been the home of one of the most renowned and celebrated folk festivals in the country. I listened to broadcasts of the shows on public radio and even watched live shows on PBS when I was in college. I moved to Dallas in the late 70’s and got so busy trying to get my life going I forgot about the festival until someone mentioned it to me at work one day. Once I knew where it was and when it was, I was determined to go.

I drug my then 9, 9 and 15 year old daughters to the campgrounds somewhat against their will. None of them claimed to be that “into” music and were not the least bit sure what folk music was anyway. When we drove up to the gates and my 15 year old looked around at the growing line of traffic and saw the sprawling campgrounds she said, “Oh, I have a really good feeling about this!”

As we drove through the gates the all volunteers greeted us with “Welcome home!” My daughters were speechless with excitement and we had what is still one of the most memorable vacations we ever had together.

Camp Bungie

In the 13 years that have passed I’ve only missed two Kerrville Festivals. The girls have grown and moved away and don’t go with me any more. My husband and his son went with me this year. In my second year at Kerrville I met a group of friends that I have come to know once a year every year (almost) since then. This group of friends is collectively known as “Camp Bungie”, named for the unique solution the members discovered for handling the sometimes 50-70 mile an hour winds that sweep through the valley. They have worked out an elaborate design for connecting their cover tarps with bungee cords flex to and fro with the wind and stay attached easily to the ground.

But the bungee cords are not what connected me to their ground. It was the delightful, giving, loving and talented group of people that welcome us, open arms every year.

One year we became known as the “plastic people” because after a show one night it had begun raining quite hard and we all donned those cheap clear plastic ponchos to keep us (relatively) dry.

Our friends, Sherry, Greg, Gumby and Pokey, Michael, Karen, Terry, Ronzo and Cat were there every single year, oh yeah, and Zoid, too. We met hundreds of others during our weekends there, but these were the constants that excitedly greeted “the plastic family” every year as we drove in and set up camp. Sherry quietly sat and read and chatted with us at meals. Michael, Ronzo, Terry, Greg and others entertained us with their playing and conversations. Ronzo had his flashing red lights, funny shaped balloons, knee high socks and shorts to accompany his wacky sense of humor. Turns out he was a clown by trade. Cat, Ronzo’s significant other knitted and talked very knowledgably with us on a variety of topics. She even bought a copy of my first book one year. Michael has always had plenty of wisdom about the world and a calm way of reacting to everything. They have always had plenty of food, shared their time, their resources and chairs with us and never asked anything in return. We always try to think of ways to help out, but its rarely accepted.

We made it!

“The plastic family” missed attending the last couple of years and we waited until the last weekend to attend, since this was the weekend “Trout Fishing in America” was going to play. “Trout” is a couple of guys who play funny, thoughtful, melodious tunes that get everyone to their feet.

We had a great night listening to Small Potatoes and Kathy Mateo Friday night with the most temperate weather we’ve ever experienced in Kerrville. I don’t know what the temperature was this past weekend, but it stayed cool late into the morning and cooled off again early in the day. This is a vast diversion from past years where it was 120° in the shade… that or pouring down rain. One year we were almost washed off the mountain.

A breezy Saturday morning

The pleasantness of Saturday morning made for a casual slow morning. Michael was all set to start cooking breakfast as we sat around drinking coffee and taking in the company. But, everyone wanted to wait for Ronzo, who seemed to be still sleeping in his tent.

One of the many traditions of the Kerrville New Folk Festival is that every night after the shows on the main stage, all around the many campsites across the valley and up on the hills are song circles that go on all night long. No one sleeps much at night and no one cares really how much sleep they get anyway. The music energizes everyone.

But some people do try to sleep in mornings as long as they can. We figured Ronzo was doing the same.

The Quadraplex

Along about 10:30 Sherry and Greg wandered down to the “quadraplex” (the latrine) and as they were coming back they saw that someone was being given CPR and was then taken off by an ambulance. Know one knew who it was, Sherry and Greg didn’t recognize the person’s shape on the stretcher. I passed them on the road as I walked down for my own trek to the latrine. People were buzzing all over the valley about the poor guy who looked like he probably wasn’t going to make it.

When I got back to “Camp Bungie” we sat around the kiddie pool with our feet in the cool water and talked about how sad for the guy and I said, ‘”Well, I have to say, if you’ve got to go, this is how I’d want to go. To be doing what you love to do surrounded by people you love.”

Reality check

About that time a Festival staff person walked up and said she had been told the name of the man that had been taken to the hospital. It was Ronzo. No one could believe it, except Greg who jumped up and said. “I’m going to town.” Someone held Sherry as she cried.

An hour or so later we got the news that Ronzo had not made it. Tears flowed around the campsite. People from all over the ranch came, hugged, cried and sat with us. I sat by Michael and patted his arm as he cried.

Looking for BLAME

Of course, our system goes on, as it always does. The police came by about an hour after we got the news and searched Ronzo’s tent. There was the potential of their having been a crime and they had to rule out foul play. Searching through his tent, getting witness reports, and eyeing the group suspiciously the police went about doing their job. We waited until the detective had done his job and drove off. That was a somber, silent time as we sat comforting each other in the shade of the billowing tarps.

Paradox

It was still a beautiful day with the sun shining brightly and the cool breeze lifting the tarps to and fro. Trout Fishing played a rousing set under the roof of the Threadgill Theatre as normal, and went on to perform at the main stage that night to a thunderous crowd. Karen and I danced and hugged as we listened to Guy Forsythe sing ‘Thank you for my friends”.

Ronzo

I learned a lot I didn’t know about Ronzo. He had been one of the original supporters of the festival and was a stockholder. The campground “Camp Bungie” was annually parked on had been provided by his investment and support in the festival. If not for supporters like Ronzo the festival could never have gotten off the ground. Ronzo had been with his significant other for more than 20 years. He was a political activist and had been a caucus member at the county level supporting Senator Obama for the Democratic Nominee for President. Later I learned that he had specifically requested no memorial service or funeral, that what he wanted was “a big party”. That definitely sounded like the Ronzo I knew and loved.

A sweet tribute

That night after the show, the “Leopard Lounge” down the hill and across the road from “Camp Bungie” hosted a spontaneous group of guitar pickers and singers singing songs about friendship. The “Leopard Lounge” campers all wore shorts, knee high socks and bright red flashing stars in honor of Ronzo’s normal apparel choices. We toasted Ronzo from time to time, but mostly sang songs about friendship and some of Ronzo’s favorites. Greg was the primary singer/picker for the evening and he ended the evening with a raised glass and the words, “Sail away Ronzo”.

I can’t imagine future festival’s without Ronzo, as I am sure most of our “Camp Bungie” group cannot. His lighthearted wit and generosity set the mood for play and gave us giggles and love. Thank you Ronzo for being a part of the “plastic family’s” love of Kerrville. We miss you already.

What about you?

Ever had a sudden loss of a compatriot? How did it affect you? Let me know. I’d love to hear your story.

Be patient, I’m going to RANT

A lot of us in Texas, and I suppose, around the world are shocked and amazed at the public turnaround on the decision to remove the 440 children from the FLDS compound in West Texas. I mean, I am glad that if CPS acted without proper authority the Supreme Court overruled them. CPS in my experience has seldom done things correctly. I have seen them remove children from parents who loved them because their spouses or boyfriends who were then incarcerated had abused their children. I have even had cases where bruised and battered adolescents were told to “Go home and mind your parents”. I’ve seen them investigate cases where kids were clearly being abused and send the child to treatment and let the parent remain in the home to have the child rejoin them with no consequence or follow up after returning from treatment. I’ve seldom seen CPS do the right thing, so it is no real surprise to me that they screwed this one up, too.

What about the kids?

My dismay is that these poor kids have had such an awful ordeal. First, they are brought up in a culture that cuts them off from any knowledge or exposure to the modern world. Then they are taught obedience to an authority that dictates to them who and when they shall marry and have children, no matter their tender years. I understand there were dozens of children under the age of 17 who were “married” mothers. The boys were taught that they, too, were to grow up and marry someone the “authority’ selected for them and to have sex with their “underage wives.”

These kids have been yanked from everything they knew, exposed to the “outside world” and given sanctity and safety for a month or so and now they are being returned to the world they were torn from. I suppose it is hard to know who the abusers are since the members of the sect deny any “abuse”. Oh, I suppose girls get pregnant by divine intervention. At least that must be how the Texas Supreme Court sees it since I have never seen more clear evidence that SOMEONE is abusing a child than that they are under age and pregnant in a cult where the BOYS never marry under age 17.

This is the biggest mess I’ve ever seen and I don’t understand what in the world is going to protect those kids from further abuse.

The New FLDS Policy

The newest thing is that they say they no longer will have a policy of letting under age girls marry. HELLO they were NEVER legally married in the FIRST PLACE. What is to prevent them from continuing an illegal practice that was never overtly practiced???

Don’t misunderstand, I don’t think these cult members who have been practicing their perverted version of Mormonism for over a hundred years. This is NOT a matter of “Religious Freedom”. It is a matter of CHILD SAFETY. Oh, and of course, polygamy itself is illegal in Texas, too.

Maybe the authorities are just stepping back to make a better case later, but in the meantime these children continue to be exposed to further abuse. What of the girls who are under age and “married” to their older cousins and uncles? Wont they go right back into the subjection of forces sexual relations with their “husband”? What is to prevent it? It is what they “believe” to be their rightful place.

What other abuse situation would we let this happen in?

In other situations where children are in a home where abuse is clearly taking place the child is NOT RETURNED because the odds are that they will be abused again. WHAT IS DIFFEREN HERE????

It is our job as a community to protect these children. We have let them down. I am disappointed and grieved that these poor kids don’t have anyone who will protect them. Their mothers and their grandmothers and their aunts and uncles all grew up believing that it is right for them to be subjected to this kind of treatment. Clearly none of them are going to protect their kids, boys or girls.

Man o’ man that CPS

CPS, “bless their hearts” are “doing the best they can”. They are going to “teach” these parents to parent??? How can they pretend that this somehow will protect these children. As long as the “husbands” have access to their “wives” the kids will be abused. It’s their “God given right” according to the FLDS beliefs.

A better solution?

From the beginning of this mess I have thought it was all handled badly. CPS went in with guns, armed to remove the kids from their “dangerous” family. It was heavy handed and frightening to participants and viewers alike. What I believe should have been done is that a number of CPS workers, social workers and psychologist should have gone in and taken charge of the kids on the compound itself. They should have separated the men and the women and began teaching them about child development, the law, and parenting. This would take months and they could continue to practice their religious beliefs while being taught a more humane way to treat children. Prosecuting the “polygamist’ marriages as they were discovered through financial penalties and incarceration only in the most hardened cases. In cases of men who have developed pedophilia as a result (we do have tests for this) remove them from access to any child (as we do in the case of other child abuse offenders) and even incarcerating those most likely to re-offend in the greater community.

What do you think?

Any other approach denies children protection, and traumatizes all the individuals involved without helping anyone only criminalizing the whole bunch as we did that fateful day we went in armed and bussed their children away from them.

What do you think? Was it right that we sent them back? What should we do? Comment below.

During the past month I have had the delight of watching two of my daughters graduate. One, my oldest twin, graduated from college with a BA in English Literature, and in 4 years time and over a 3.0 average. The other, my oldest, graduated from Law School and within the top 5% of her class. My youngest twin daughter will graduate from college with a BA in History, and double minors in Radio-TV-Film and Chinese, graduating Cum Laude. Looking back over the past 28 years, I can honestly say I couldn’t have wished for more for my girls.

Honestly, I was not always sure they would make it to where they are now. I always knew what they were capable of achieving, but it wasn’t always clear they would make it. They all had their challenges.

My lawyer daughter

My oldest was always amazing. I told her from the time she was three that she should be an attorney because she could make an argument better than anyone I knew. She had her problems in school, not academically, but personally. Many of her teachers did not appreciate that she was smarter than they and resented her. She was outspoken and unbelievably bright. Her father abandoned her when she was eight and she had a horrid relationship with her step-father. She never felt like she fit into the small town we lived in as she was growing up. Then, after I left her step-father and was a single mom of three, she fell in with the kids who smoked cigarettes (among other things). Still, she managed to keep her grades up enough to graduate, though school was not her first interest. I am sure because of the fact she had no real relationship with a father figure, she always had a boyfriend – some not so wonderful. She was rebellious at times with me, fighting to find a sense of herself.

Fortunately for both of us I knew not to fight her. I knew not to engage in power struggles and put her into positions that took her power away, but instead to allow her to find her own way. Keeping from engaging in either rescuing her or moving into “making her” do what I wanted to do, allowed her to blossom into the wonderful young woman she always had inside.

News proud

The oldest of my twin girls is now heading to her life after being the news editor of her college paper and dealing with a room mate with terminal cancer for the past year. She has managed to remain out of the rescuer role while still being available for her friend. Now, she is going to either Taiwan or New York City, depending on what job is offered to her. She is courageous, tenacious and kind. Whatever she ends up doing, she will keep that strong sense of herself. I left her father when she was only 7 and she was angry and hurt by our failed marriage. Yet she kept her self together and on the honor role throughout high school. It must have been hard for her because her twin sister was dyslexic and struggling all through school. She never rescued her sister, but always believed in her and encouraged her.

Wow, look at her now!

My youngest twin, graduating in August, has overcome dyslexia to become an honor student and will be graduating cum laude. She was, I was told, one of the most severely dyslexic children. But she was determined and loved reading. Then, with remarkable determination chose to learn Mandarin Chinese, even spending 10 months in Taiwan to immerse herself in the language. She loves learning and is planning on spending another 2 years there after graduation. She might have given up in grade school when the kids teased her and teachers pressured her, but she didn’t. She avoided becoming a victim and took ownership of her life.

I still have two kids left, my husbands’ children from a previous marriage, and they are on a clear path to success as well. His oldest is going to New York University and just returned from a stud abroad program in London, and will be heading to Australia in July. She fought to find herself in spite of her difficult relationship with her mother, and dealing with her parents divorce. My husbands’ youngest, his son, is now in middle school and an A student, despite behavioral problems that were overwhelming in elementary school.

What made it work

Understanding the Cycles of the Heart has changed everything for me, for my kids and for my new marriage. I am proud of the fact that I have managed to avoid remaining in the victim position myself. It would have been easy to do, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, two divorces, and been a single mom. Knowing how the Cycle of Egocentrism can ruin your life and relationships I fight to keep my automatic brain from dragging me down its tyrannical path.

I can’t help but believe that my ability to remain (mostly) in the Cycle of Compassion is why my kids are where they are today. I thank God for my having stumbled across this model. It really does change everything.

Cult Abuse of Chlldren

What might have happened if the mothers and children of the Branch Davidians had been captured instead of slaughtered that day in April, 1995? Would it have been that different than what is happening today? A cult that uses women and children as their sex slaves in the name of religion is one that cannot be allowed to continue.

What they are brought up to believe

Yet the children, male and female alike, in this bizarre sect have all been brought up to believe in their “faith” s as a natural, precious, and fundamental part of what it is to be a human being. They go about their lives believing, as they have for generations, that this is truth and the way to God’s Kingdom. Each and every one of them is raised to accept this view of themselves and others. They each believe in what they were conditioned to believe since birth. Their accepted worldview rejects or technology, and our modern ways and the knowledge of psychology and the acquired wisdoms of the past 150 years. Ignorance was their choice. It is always the way of cults in general. Outside knowledge of other’s beliefs is not only discouraged but punished. No new knowledge can be allowed into the closed system because new knowledge would destroy the system.

Who is going to be prosecuted?

Do you prosecute the women who were brought up to believe that marrying off your children to much older men is acceptable? Do you prosecute these same women for abandoning their young sons that were thrown out of their “families” because there were too many of them? Do your prosecute the men, who were brought up to believe it is their rightful place to have many young wives and force them to have sex with them as they please?

Clearly Criminal

Clearly all of the above constitute legal abuse and crimes that are normally punishable by law. Yet what happens when we begin to view this case as a case of programming, not unlike that of Patty Hearst? All of the members of this sect were programmed from birth to see their lifestyle as the only choice acceptable by God as they understand him.

Is it our role as a legal community to imprison them for their crimes, as we did Patty Hearst, or is our responsibility to them something entirely different? What if we could view them not as perpetrators of horrors upon innocent victims, but as victims themselves worthy of our compassion?

The Travesty

Some people already are seeing the travesty that is likely to occur to these people and have been protesting outside the courtrooms where we attempt to find “justice” for those our courts are attempting to protect. Unfortunately there are no “bad guys” here to prosecute. The system was the problem, not the people involved. All of these people were caught up in a system that was dangerous and just plain wrong. But there are no bad guys are there?

A different perspective

It changes everything when you try to look a situation from the prospective of compassion rather than the old egocentric view of seeing everyone as a good guy, a bad guy or a victim. When we impose our legal system on these people by prosecuting them for doing what they earnestly believed was the righteous way of living, we become what our forefathers fought against. We as a community become the perpetrators by prosecuting this group for their religious practices.

Clearly abuse is abuse

But what they were doing to their children was wrong. There is no question about that is there? Raping children of the age of 12 or 14, abandoning children (boys) who were not going to be useful in continuing their patterns of multiple marriages to one male is all wrong. Morally and ethically we cannot let it continue, but we have to stop it in a way that does not make anyone a criminal.

Practicing Empathy

We have to put ourselves in their shoes and practice empathy for their situation. There are those in our culture (among whom I count myself) who oppose the everyday practice of circumcision as genital mutilation of our baby boys. It’s as wrong as the genital mutilation of girls that we have outlawed in this country, even when practiced for religious reasons. Yet we continue to practice this primitive mutilation of baby boys on a daily basis all across our nation. It’s okay to do it to boys, but not to girls. I don’t get that at all.

When we consider that the practice of genitally mutilating boys is a natural normal practice in our culture, it makes it hard not to step into the shoes of a cult that sees raping 12-14 year old girls as a natural and normal practice in theirs.

It changes everything when we begin to have empathy for their beliefs and understand that, like us, they have been brought up in a culture which finds some very bizarre practices to be normal and natural.

What do you think?

Is there a difference between taking innocent babies and mutilating their genitals and taking a 12-13 year old girl into a forced marriage and raping them? Can you find empathy for their strange beliefs or do you see them as a sick, perverted culture that needs to be punished? Tell me what you think. Comment below

Pope Benedict XVI Steps Up

In a landmark event Pope Benedict XVI met with several survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic Priests. Over 4,000 people have sued the church for their part in allowing the perpetuation of abuse by priests throughout the world. The church has paid out more than $2 billion in damages to survivors and many dioceses are in bankruptcy as a result of the suits. The sexual perpetration of children put in the care of the church has been a travesty that no amount of money can begin to repay. Raping children, in Louisiana, is now being considered as a crime punishable by death.

The Cycle of Egocentrism

Most victims of such abuse are rightfully angry at what was done to them, and considered the church a part of the abuse because of their negligence in removing known offenders from priesthood. The church became the target of their anger and their blame. The church became the “bad guy” in their drama just as surely as the offending priests themselves.

The Cycle of Compassion

But as of Thursday, April 17^th , 2008, the Catholic Church began the process of taking ownership of the horror the church condoned by it’s neglect over the course of history.

Over the course of the past ten years of victims of the pedophile priests coming out into the public with their stories the church has denied their part in the abuse. Church officials have either turned their heads away or flat out denied any responsibility in these crimes. The self-protective stance of the church led these now adult victims of this horror to attack back by suing the church, thereby becoming self-protectors themselves.

Owning Up

Pope Benedict XVI took the historic step to meet with a few of the victims to begin the process of owning up to what the church has failed to own up to in the past. By apologizing to the victims of the abuse, the Pope has demonstrated the practice of compassion in his papacy.

The Practice of Compassion Changes Everything

When we begin to practice compassion by taking ownership of our part in a wrong we are not taking the blame for what has occurred, we are simply stating that we are responsible for our part in it. This is what the Pope did last week.

By allowing those few victims to face the person who is now, ultimately, responsible for the actions of the entire Catholic church, Pope Benedict XVI has chosen to move out of the dark ages of egocentrism and into compassion thereby changing one of the patterns long ago established by the church. That changes everything for the now adult survivors of the churches negligence.

Have you been affected by a pedophile priest?

Do you have a history that you would like to tell here? Has someone you love been affected? I’d love to hear from you. Comment below.

Cycles of Dysfunction

One of the biggest stories in Texas for the past couple of weeks has been the story about the “Fundamentalist” branch of Mormons who lived on a 700 acre compound in south Texas while practicing their beliefs of polygamy as a valid, spiritual practice allowing all members to experience closeness to God through their patience. This practice has as a centerpiece of its practices the pre-arrangement of marriages of older men (40-50 years old) to girls when they turn 13. The girls are then supposed to become one of their husbands many wives and bear children from which other men will choose their future 13-year-old wife.

Twisted Faith

The members of this sect are loyal Christians believing in the Book of Mormon from some “fundamental” perspective that ordains their behaviors as sacred. All of the children are brought up in this system, and as a part of this system are indoctrinated into believing that they are doing what is right and spiritual, including the males. It’s easy to think of this sect as a group of perverted individuals who prey on young girls and subjugate the women into sexual slavery, because, by our standards and beliefs, that is exactly what is occurring in fact.

Perpetrators?

Of course, this is how the legal system addresses this issue as well, treating the men as wicked perpetrators preying on innocent young girls. We love to look at things in black and white terms in our world, and our legal system is organized to support a clear-cut right and wrong view of the world.

Is legal perpetration any better?

But what if we could step back from the Victim-Perpetrator-Rescuer mentality long enough to consider the wholeness of what has occurred. The practice of polygamy in the name of religion is at least as old as our country. Generations of children have been brought up believing in this practice as a part of their spirituality and taught, through this twisted view of Christianity, that it is the right and proper actions for all involved. Members of the religion believe it is their right to have the most basic of our US Constitutional rights, to practice their faith as they see fit.

In fact, other religions have been honored in their spiritual practices and given rights to do things that would otherwise be considered illegal. Native Americans are allowed to gather and possess Peyote (a psychosis-inducing plant that is classified as an illegal drug). Other religions have allowed the mutilation of children for thousands of years and it is practiced as an accepted part of our culture without question from authorities: circumcisions of male infants.

What is so different about what this sect is doing? Forcing sexual intercourse on anyone, married or not, 13 or not, is rape. But I also think its atrocious to cut on the genitals of infants…

Where is our line?

We must look at the rights of children and certainly forcing them in to marriage and sex at 13 is wrong, but the entire sect believed this to be an honorable spiritual practice, even the men. Their cult, along with all others, is base on a the Cycle of Egocentrism and can only be positively addressed by using the Cycle of Compassion.
We become the perpetrator

Law enforcement swoops down and grabs up over 400 children, many of who are already mothers themselves, and sent them off to overcrowded facilities with caregivers from an entirely different world. This traumatized the children even further and certainly did nothing to help them perceive this new world in which they found themselves seem safe or inviting. So in trying to rescue these children our community becomes the perpetrator, harming them even further. The people they love are now being seen as criminals and the children, then put in a place to want to protect the only family they know, and in spite of what may have happened to them, they want to “rescue” the people we perceive of as their perpetrators.

What is right?

In the “cycle of egocentrism”, which involves viewing the cult members as “evildoers” and criminals, from whom their victims need rescuing we remain caught up in a system of pain and misery. What if we could see these people as wounded individuals who need our help in discovering more productive ways to live with each other and in the world? What if we had some empathy for their worldview and, while taking ownership of protecting the children, and gave them respect for the fact that each of them was doing what they believed to be correct (no matter how ill conceived)? Wouldn’t that change everything?

What do you think?

Whether you understand the bizarre practices of this South Texas cult, you certainly have some opinions about both the cult and our response to it. Let me know what you think.

Comment below. Use the security key – I’ve been being spammed lately…

The power of projection

John Gottman is the doctor of love, at least love of the conventional sort—he's an internationally known researcher on what makes marriage last and what makes it fall apart. In his work at the University of Washington, he has managed to apply strict scientific rigor to what seems like the most subjective of areas, and he's popularized his findings in a string of best-selling books (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is the most recent).

Our search for the perfect person

He writes about the power of projection in this article from Seatle Weekly. He suggests that our power of projection is so powerful in the early stages of our relationships because we want so desperately to find the perfect person that we will project those wishes on to the object of our desire – whether they have the wished for qualities or not!

This of course sets us up for a disastrous relationship. We think we are getting something entirely differently than we actually get. I have had more than one couple enter my office saying “Where is the person I married?”

What changed here?

They, of course, think their partner has changed, when in actuality, their partner has not changed, but rather the awareness of who that partner really is has now come into the complainers consciousness.

Projection can work the other way around, too. When we carry childhood wounds (and, okay, tell me someone who doesn’t and I’ll tell you somebody’s not being honest) we have learned things about the world that we believe to be true. These are like the Four Agreements by Don Miquel Ruiz, we learn or accept certain things to be true about the world, then we go about proving them through the process of our lives.

Projections at work

For instance, I have a friend who gets really frustrated with her husband because he insists that she doesn’t “listen to” him. My friend is an awesome listener. That’s why she is my best friend, I always feel heard by her. I suspect this is one of those things being projected on to her by her husband. Of course, it could be that she projects on to him that he is never going to be happy with her.

Our wounding

You see how it works? We have some wound from childhood (my friend’s husband’s family never listened to him) and then we go about projecting this as an undeniable truth in our lives “no one listens to me”. It changes everthing when you can recognize your projections.

How about you?

Do you have something you project on to someone? I know most of my life I have projected that my anger is not acceptable (therefore pretending I don’t have any). Or is do you feel someone is projecting something on you that is not yours?

No innocents killed?

Al Qaeda “doesn’t kill innocents” according to it’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri. He made his remarks in response to questions solicited on a Web site close to al Qaeda. Typical.

Typical Self-Protectors

Typical Self-Protectors blame their victims for their behaviors. A Self-Protector believes the person they are attacking is to blame for their misery. They cannot see the person they are attacking as innocent. They fail to see any other perspective, they twist reality to suit their own survival needs.

Bullies do that, too, don’t they? They convince themselves that the miserable little person they are beating up on has more power than they do. They pick on the person they perceive as smarter, more able than they in some way. Bullies decide that the person they are attacking deserves what they do to them.

Attacking and blame

When we find ourselves in a position of attacking someone else, we have lost our perspective on what is really taking place. Blame does that, it throws us into a distorted view of ourselves and our world.

When we blame and attack we lose sight of the other person entirely, we only see the world through our own, egocentric, position. We are hurting so we look for someone to blame for our hurt.

Look at the circumstances

When we fail to look at the circumstances that lead to the wound we are experiencing we loose contact with reality. But our brain response is that it doesn’t matter, we just need someone to lay the blame on so that we can protect ourselves.

Understanding that a man beating his wife feels a desperate need to get control can help us prevent it from happening in the future. Blaming him for his helplessness and throwing him into jail or paying fines doesn’t help us discover the underlying cause of his misery and subsequent reaction to that misery. Yes, of course, he is responsible for his behavior, but simply viewing his behavior absent understanding of the context shortchanges everyone, including the victim. How many times do victims return to their abuser? If we unravel the tangled web of what each party is experiencing and move into a different paradigm for understanding the patters, it changes everything.

What the world needs

This is what we need to do on a world scale, as well as a personal one. When we fail to uncover the intricacies of what is really happening when someone is attacking another, we fail to respond in a way that can prevent future conflict.

Is understanding the cause of something the same as blame?

What do you think? When we look for a reason something occurred, as reasonable people will do, is this the same as blame? Or is blame something else? Let me know what you think, comment below.

Watch out for those girls!

Yesterday CNN ran a story about women’s tendencies to revenge. Wow, this story certainly validates the statement “Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned”. Teri Garr took a hammer to a cheating boyfriends’ windows and wasn’t even arrested. Catch a guy going that and he’ll spend time in the slammer.

Women throughout history have been considered “the weaker sex” and always considered to be the Victim and rarely thought to be the Perpetrator in any conflict. We like to think of women as nurturing caregivers or helpless victims. We don’t like the view of women as the Perpetrator, so even when we do find them there, we justify their behavior by claiming that (as Teri Garr said) she really was.

Our cultural and biological bias

Our biology and our culture demands that we find someone to blame for anything that occurs and that we put ourselves (and everyone else) into defined roles. This helps our rational mind make stories out of what has happened that we can tell future generations and ourselves. This history making activity is as old as time and we still practice it today when we think of our own lives and the stories we tell ourselves.

In Teri Garr’s story she is the victim, and her cheating boyfriend is the bad guy. But can you imagine his story? “There I was eating my dinner after leaving work and this crazy b**ch starts breaking out my windows with a hammer! Then I called the police and they did nothing! Can you believe it?”

Good guys and bad guys

When we categorize the people in our life stories as being the “bad guy” and “to blame” for what occurs and put ourselves in the Victim position then we can leave the story with a clear conscious that we have done “nothing wrong”. We have a logical explanation for what has happened and we can view ourselves as blameless in the situation. We are good while the other guy is the bad one. Whatever behavior we choose to take retaliation on the bad guy is acceptable since they are the bad guys.

When we are attacked, when our sense of safety and well being in threatened, we have a right to fight back don’t we? After all, not doing something to fight back would be considered weak wouldn’t it? Isn’t that why we have the death penalty in Texas, to punish the bad guys? Isn’t that why we go to war, to defend ourselves from the “evil doers” of the world? At least that is what our president told us.

Self Protectors

When we find ourselves thrown into this (what I call) Self-Protective role, we end up being perceived as the “bad guy” by the other person don’t we? I’m sure Teri Garr’s boyfriend (now, “ex” of course) thinks of her actions that day as being that of a perpetrator. He and his property were attacked after all.

Blame drives the game

What blame does is to assign all responsibility for something on to someone in order to meet our survival needs. We either assign all responsibility for something on to someone else in order to preserve the idea that we are perfect, or at least, not all bad or we accept all the responsibility for something in order to reinforce the idea of our worthlessness.

Blame is all black and white. There is no complex formula that includes partial equations. It’s a simple 1+2=3. But life, as in math, is seldom, if ever, that simple.

Is there another way?

What if we stepped out of the simple equation and started seeing the complexities that are the realities of our lives and our world? How would that change your perceptions, not only of your own life, but of the world?

The US Rescuer

Throughout our national history the United States has been the worlds Rescuers. We give more per capita than any other nation in the world. We take our wealth around the world and help developing nations in whatever ways we can think of (whether that’s the help the country wants or not) and then we move on to our next project. Yet on September 11^th, 2001 the US became, not a Rescuer, but a Victim. We then responded by becoming a Self-Protector, fighting against the perceived perpetrators. Now, of course, the world sees us as the bad guy.

What if we had looked at the equation differently?

What if we had done as I thought Donald Rumsfeld was going to do when he said we needed to look at the circumstances which led to this event? We helped Afghanistan beat the Russian invasion and then left the country broken, and without the means to heal itself. Charlie Wilson warned the US government that it would leave Afghanistan as a time bomb. It was a bomb that exploded in New York City on that fateful day.

It really does change everything when you start to look at the fractions in the equation instead of rounding off the numbers. When you do this you get a much clearer picture. What was going on with Teri’s boyfriend that he would “cheat” on her? Did he think she cared more about her career than him? Did he feel his needs didn’t matter to her? When someone “cheats” then there are obviously intimacy issues within both parties. One person’s acting out on the problem is not good ethics, but they are not to blame for the problem.

What do you think?

Is it easier to think of the world in terms of blacks and whites? Does it make more sense to view people as either the good guy or the bad guy? Tell me what you think. Comment below.

New Study on Anger

Validation

Wow I feel validated! I’ve been preaching for years the importance of expressing your anger and not shying from conflict. Now research validates its importance to the quality of our lives. Holding back our feelings has dire consequences, it seems.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we have license to attack each other, it just means we are encouraged to speak our angry feelings out loud.

Confusion between anger and violence

Those of us who grew up in homes where angry outbursts accompanied hitting, verbal abuse, throwing things – or worse – are often frightened of anyone expressing their anger, no matter how benignly they do it. Some of us are down right anger phobic, both of our own and others.

In my family growing up, the only people allowed to have their anger were the adults. If one of us kids smarted off or expressed our anger we were punished by being shamed with laughter, sent to our rooms and told we were being “ugly”. But the adults were allowed to hit us with belts, “green switches”, hairbrushes and their hands and to yell and scream as long and as abusively as they choose.

Of course, I didn’t want to be like that myself, and certainly felt ashamed if I ever found myself provoked to anger.

The result is that we think that any time anyone expresses anger they are being violent. We then put them in the role of “the bad guy” and think of whoever they dumped their anger out on as “the victim.”

Choosing to be rational

Many people growing up in very refined homes never witnessed anyone expressing anger directly and they internalize it and rationalize it away without ever having a chance to even let it come to conscious awareness. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist! Just because we renationalize it away doesn’t mean we haven’t felt it, and that it still doesn’t need release.

The physiology of anger

Anger is like any of our emotions, a necessary part of being a human being. We feel anger for a reason, again, like all of our feelings. Anger is there to tell us “Something is wrong. I need to do something about this!” When we fail to express the need to do something differently, we end up locking this “energy-in-motion” (the definition of emotion) into our bodies. The energy of the emotion of anger starts out in our root chakra and moves outward and upward through our bodies. But, if we block the flow of emotion and fight it down using our physiology to stop it (holding our breath, tensing our diaphragm, tightening our shoulders, gritting our teeth) we lock it into place so that it does not get expressed. Then, the effort of locking in that emotion takes its toll on the body. We experience stomach problems, breathing problems, muscular aches and pains, perhaps fibro-myalgia, some say even cancers can be triggered this way.

What I am NOT saying

I am not saying it’s okay to blast people with unbridled attacks, either. There was a period of time when people used “I’m just having my feelings!” as an excuse to attack anyone and to dump their feelings off on others. I am NOT advocating this kind of behavior. What I am advocating is that we all MUST find a way to express our feelings of anger appropriately and consistently if we are to remain healthy and have strong, long lasting relationships.

A paradigm shift

The next time someone appears angry take the time inside to remember 1) this does not mean they are going to hurt someone (necessarily) 2) this person feels something is wrong in their world and may need some help. The shift that takes place when you begin to view anger in this way can change everything for you.

What do you think?

Are you able to handle it when people express anger? Or do you clam up and try to avoid the situation? Is it best to avoid anger and conflict at all costs? Let me know what you think. Comment below.

Thinking Positive

Last week a friend of mine who is a great, positive, upbeat guy, came down with the flu. When ran into him last week I gave him a hug. His cheek burned into mine. I said, “Charlie, you have a 102 fever!” He said “Naw. I’m fine.”

This, of course, is the way we are taught to think positively about illness and not acknowledge that we are ill because doing so will make it reality. This is how anything with the potential to be viewed as “negative” is dealt with in the world of positive thinking. Ignore it and it will go away. Focus only on the positive things that you want and that is what you will get.

I’m a “positive thinker” from way back

Understand, I am a positive thinker from way back, but there are some obvious flaws in this type of thinking. I believe that we should always focus on the positive and use affirmations and picture what we want. This keeps us focused on our goals and helps us realize them.

Rescuing ourselves

But what I have come to recognize is that the practice of ignoring the problems that occur is a way of “rescuing” ourselves from the consequences of our choices. It helps us to keep ourselves from feeling the pain of what has occurred in our past and from feeling the results of our choices. It also prevents us from learning from them and healing them.

This is what we do when we pretend that hurtful things don’t exist or choose not to “dwell on the past”. These are words and practices that help us avoid dealing with the feelings about what has happened.

A lot of people rush to the practices of positive thinking because it will help them continue to avoid feeling pain. It is painful, sometimes, to face the consequences of our choices and to process through the pain of what has happened to us in the past. Our old wounds don’t go away simply because we don’t focus on them, no matter how much we desire it.

The consequences of ignoring wounds

Ignoring our emotional wounds is like continuing to walk on a broken leg, insisting that it’s not broken. Actually, it’s even worse than that, because emotional wounds fester in subversive ways that prevent us from functioning in our lives the way we want. Emotional wounds that are not addressed result in corrupted thinking and distorted emotional responses to others and ourselves. They end up sabotaging our every intentional positive thought. Our unconscious feelings and thoughts always override our conscious ones.

Treasure hunting

Inside every painful emotional wound lies a treasure. Each wound holds a piece of our personal power and our preciousness. Without being willing to open up those wounds and explore their meanings and discover their gifts, we are forced to be a Victim.

Any time someone is wounded they are a “victim” (as in the terms “shot victim”, “bite victim”, “rape victim”, etc.) until these wounds are healed. Carrying around unhealed wounds keeps us stuck in being a Victim.

Ignoring them using “positive thinking” as an excuse to avoid them is using “positive thinking” to become your own Rescuer.

Uncover the pockets of power

Making the choice to work through the wounds allows you to uncover the pockets of power buried there. This works in exactly the same way as the methods proposed by Robert Scheinfeld in “Busting Loose from the Money Game” (available in the Unity Book Store). In this book, Scheinfeld encourages readers to expand upon feelings as they come up and to deeply explore what the feelings are all about before letting them go. In doing this, he claims, you unlock the power to have everything you want in your life.

Unlock your full potential by allowing yourself to have full access to all the power hidden inside your wounds. Change everything by no longer hiding from the power you hold back by being your own Rescuer.

What do you think, am I crazy?

Can feelings really hold the power to your unconscious will? Can you really discover the secret to having everything you want by simply allowing yourself to process through your unprocessed wounds? Or have I gone off my rocker? Tell me what you think. Comment below!