When are you justified in feeling a certain way?

[Guest guest]

Q: When are you justified in feeling a certain way?

A: Trick question. A better question is " when are you going to feel entitled to

have the feeling that you unavoidably already have? "

THE FOCUS OF EGO ANALYSIS

http://bapfelbaumphd.com/The_Focus_of_Ego_Analysis.html

I received this from another list, but it's a bit lengthy so here are some

excerpts:

[referring to a WWII veteran with flashbacks]

But he never discussed the attack until a few years ago when his niece cajoled

him into a video interview for her college oral history project. " That just got

the monkey off my back, " he said. " I spent all those years trying to forget it.

The best thing to do was to talk about it. That really helped. "

Of course, there are some survivors of major disasters who talk about it freely

and some who, when they do talk about it, get no relief, just as we might

expect. But there is this striking prototype: survivors of major disasters, most

notably combat veterans, will maintain a legendary silence about the experience,

even despite being harassed by flashbacks.

(snip)

Everyone knows that talking something out in the presence of a sympathetic

listener can be relieving.

(snip)

But, as Freud found, people don't always want their chimneys swept; they may

strongly resist it, just as do the survivors of major disasters. We can raise

the same question: why do they resist talking, since it can be so relieving?

The answer that is easy to arrive at from the ego analytic position, using the

newspaper story as an example, centers on the seemingly irrelevant fact that the

man's niece was videotaping him for an oral history project. It made her a

neutral observer, and also he was doing it for her. She wasn't there to help him

and, given this circumstance, undoubtedly felt no obligation to respond

reassuringly.

Most people would try to be reassuring or to help the victim to come to terms

with the traumatic event-to say that what's past is past, that there is no

reason to keep torturing yourself, that it does no good to keep going over the

trauma, that you need to just let it go.

That's how we react to continuing emotional suffering in our friends and

relatives. What they hear is that their suffering is no longer justified-that

they no longer DESERVE sympathy, even that they are being self-indulgent. Of

course, no one would SAY that. People just want the victim " to get on with his

life. " But it comes across as " stop wallowing. " Why is that?

(snip)

suffering typically is met with skepticism. Suffering in silence is considered

heroic, which gets taken to extremes in the movies that help shape our ideals.

Some thinkers have gone so far as to argue that the very word victim should be

struck from our vocabulary (opposed to this age-old system of denial is the

recent concept of " blaming the victim. " )

There is another reason why these attempts to be helpful come across to the

sufferer as " stop wallowing. " We respond to our own suffering in the same way;

we blame the victim when it's us. Victims are already feeling that they should

get over it. They may begin feeling that pretty quickly-like right away.

When teams of disaster counselors are sent to the scene of a massacre, these

people are rarely professionals. They do not need to be, any more than did the

man's niece with her video camera. Not much training is required, only the

insight that their reassuring, nonjudgmental presence is what finally reconciles

the person to the traumatic experience. They know to suppress the reflex to tell

victims to quit feeling sorry for themselves or to offer all the disguised

versions of this advice. In other words, they are trained to not respond the way

everyone does. Difficult though it can be to suppress these reactions, when they

do, and when they can stand having the victim tell the story in increasing

detail, the traumatic reaction subsides. The presence of a nonjudgmental

counselor earnestly and respectfully asking the victim to go over the traumatic

event is both unnatural and relieving.

Our reflexive disqualification of suffering goes pretty deep, and as you get

more fully into it, it becomes apparent that at its core is the feeling of

self-responsibility.

(snip)

Survivor guilt-guilt about surviving when the others didn't-is another

self-blaming disqualification of suffering.

(snip)

[Greg: the next two paragraphs are key]

Since survivors of profound and obvious disasters are so numbed to their pain,

this should tell us that the usual run of much more ambiguous everyday blows

must give us more trouble than we realize.

(snip)

Since even victims of massive trauma can doubt their right to their pain, this

should help us to feel entitled to our doubts about how much we deserve to

suffer from ambiguous or hard-to-detect everyday blows. This is to say that we

have a lot of difficulty telling whether an experience is traumatic or not. We

have mini- disasters, maybe micro-mini-disasters all the time in reaction to

external and internal events. But that is not the problem. The problem is that

it is hard for us to recognize these crises.

(snip)

Ego analysts are, in effect, disaster counselors about subtle crises. The

reaction, if we are aware of it at all, is typically to feel at fault, to

experience some kind of internal scolding or shaming, either seeming to come out

of nowhere or, if more specific, being the self-recrimination that you should

have been able to do something about it, or that you didn't deserve to be the

survivor, or that you should have been more loving, less selfish, immature,

crazy, or bad. But, unlike really clear self-recriminations, as in first-stage

grief, the effect of our collisions with experience can be hard to describe,

other than that the person feels UNENTITLED to the experience or that, as Dan

Wile has put it (in How to be a Spokesperson), the effect is LOSS OF VOICE.

What does feeling unentitled to the experience and losing one's voice about a

subtle crisis look like? First of all, it may look to the naked eye like nothing

happened, at least nothing that could be called a crisis.

(snip)

In other words, the trauma is in not being able to figure out what hit you.

(snip)

A woman in her therapy group described feeling tyrannized by her boyfriend and

having no way to cope with it. The therapist was quoted as advising: " Life is

pretty simple. You don't like something? You either accept what is, or you

change it. " The therapist thought her forte was encouraging people to take

charge of their lives.

With every intention of being encouraging, the therapist comes down hard

on the point that this woman just SHOULD take charge of her life. She might just

as well have said to her, " Look, this is a test of character. Do you have what

it takes or not? " Can you imagine the woman responding with, " Well, THAT'S not

very sympathetic! " or, " You're just turning it back on ME! "

Like the rest of us, this woman probably had trouble figuring out

whether she was being traumatized; she can't tell when she is being made to look

foolish or when she is being bullied. Then she is stuck.

(snip)

Not being able to have the experience, she will be stuck trying to find A

SOLUTION, a way out of it. The therapist offers her one, making it harder for

her to have HER FEELINGS, harder for her to believe she has a right to her

pain-stuck trying to solve the problem, but unable to have the experience and

unable to know that THAT was her problem.

(snip)

The woman apparently brightened and nodded appreciatively, which can be a

reaction difficult to distinguish from embarrassment or from being in a mild

state of shock. She was being told, in this cheerful way, that she was making

life complicated and that complaining about her boyfriend was pretty lame. She

may well have felt a little foolish, like the butt of a joke, but she would have

not been able to acknowledge that feeling, even to herself. After all, she was

accustomed to being tyrannized, as by her boyfriend.

She may have genuinely wanted to feel grateful for this therapist's

pronouncement, out of some vague hope that by accepting her as a wise all-seeing

authority and, correspondingly, her own weakness or foolishness, she would

somehow be ultimately empowered. This could make it especially hard to not take

the therapist as she defines herself. The effect is loss of voice, certainly for

any embarrassment.

What creates relief for trauma survivors is being helped to believe that they

have a right to suffer. If THEY doubt their right to suffer, what about the rest

of us?

(snip)

And perhaps the point about the victim of everyday mini-disasters is that it is

not at all clear that they are blameless, and it is not at all clear whether

there even was a disaster.

[Guest guest]

>And perhaps the point about the victim of everyday mini-disasters is

that it is

not at all clear that they are blameless, and it is not at all clear

whether

there even was a disaster.

Hi Greg,

I have been thinking along the same lines and appreciate all the

information avaliable to help remove this stigma from the victim.

Today my 85 year old father was rushed to the hospital in another

state, my brother, half my age, could not reach me, my cell phone

battery was low and so he called my nada, she is not his mother, he

asked her to locate me and pass the message on. He also left

messages on my cell phone. I recieved the cell messages a few hours

late but I was still able to speak to both my father and brother.

The strange thing is that my mother called no one, not me, not my

daughters, she made no effort to pass the information, that may lead

to my fathers death, on to anyone. She is not senial, she knows all

phone numbers and incidently she did not call my Dad in the hospital

either.

She has no ill will toward this man in fact she talks to him often

but still she did not consider his feelings or mine. I hate to be so

negitive but I bet that she was holding onto the information to make

a point of making me look bad. Or guilty. I am over feeling much of

anything when it comes to her and that is the slap in the face she

can't take.

I wish that the mental health community would let us tell our stories

instead of expecting that we should overcome. They, the BP's and NP

and Bipolar's should be held accountable and if the can't take the

heat maybe they will go away.

Seriously, I am fed up, the pain they dish out and the people hurt

must stop and until we are allowed VOICE they have free reign.

I am about to make that point very clear to the mental Health Clinic

of a good sized town and see how they react.

Vicki

[Guest guest]

<< I am about to make that point very clear to the mental Health

Clinic of a good sized town and see how they react. >>

Vicki, you are doing a brave thing. Be strong and we are here for

you if they don't react well.

Although I am so frustrated that my shrink doesn't have any idea what

it is like to be me, he is really good about validating the reality

of Nada's craziness. Every time he has a colleague visit from

America he asks what is going on there, too. He tells me that even

though I take my fear of America too personally, everyone he has

talked to validates the reality of what I am seeing.

- Dan

[Guest guest]

I hope it goes well, Vicki. I think a major problem is lack of funding. I

don't think they have the money to help people sufficiently. But I also

think that a lot of those in the mental help profession haven't healed

themselves from their own punitive, authoritarian, controlling backgrounds.

They can only feel their " un " entitled pain by projecting it onto their

" patients " where they can then engage in the invalidating, self-loathing by

proxy in a futile attempt to regain previously denied power. A vicious

cycle of power denied and power sought.

That's my pessimism for the day.

Re: When are you justified in feeling a certain way?

> << I am about to make that point very clear to the mental Health

> Clinic of a good sized town and see how they react. >>

>

> Vicki, you are doing a brave thing. Be strong and we are here for

> you if they don't react well.

>

> Although I am so frustrated that my shrink doesn't have any idea what

> it is like to be me, he is really good about validating the reality

> of Nada's craziness. Every time he has a colleague visit from

> America he asks what is going on there, too. He tells me that even

> though I take my fear of America too personally, everyone he has

> talked to validates the reality of what I am seeing.

>

> - Dan

>

>

>

>

> Send questions and/or concerns to ModOasis-owner

> " Stop Walking on Eggshells, " a primer for non-BPs, can be ordered via

1-888-35-SHELL () and for the table of contents, go to:

> http://www.BPDCentral.com

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

> They can only feel their " un " entitled pain by projecting it onto

their

" patients " where they can then engage in the invalidating, self-

loathing by

proxy in a futile attempt to regain previously denied power. A vicious

cycle of power denied and power sought.

That's my pessimism for the day.

Greg,

Again I do agree with you. I am seething a bit at the moment while

my father is told he will have a tripple by pass on Monday and my

mother still has called no one, her therapst is on my list of calls.

How do I get it across to these people that her behaviour is

increassingly damaging to her family. I would like to say it is her

age but only in that her time is shorter and her goal to seek and

dystroy more focused. >While they offer support to me for her

ruthless actions what I want is an admission of an illnees and family

intervention. That seems unlikely as it violates her rights.

Vicki

> >

> >

[Guest guest]

> Q: When are you justified in feeling a certain way?

>

> A: Trick question. A better question is " when are you going to

feel entitled to have the feeling that you unavoidably already have? "

>

>

Thanks for putting this out on the board. I think it ties into what

my therapist has been trying to get me to talk about. I tend to 'look

at the positive'. This is probably good for someone who is always

pessimistic. But I am not. What I have done is minimized my painful

feelings by replacing them with 'the positive'. Until I accept those

feelings, and recognized their cause, and own that I have a right to

feel the way I do, I am not going to heal.

Sylvia

[Guest guest]

Vicki,

I understand your anger that your mother didn't call you, or anyone.

Especially if you believe she is doing this to destroy you or make

you look bad. That just hurts big time!

What kind of family intervention are you hoping for the mental health

clinic to do? I'm not clear on that.

Free

--- In ModOasis , " eventoftheseason "

>

> Greg,

> Again I do agree with you. I am seething a bit at the moment while

> my father is told he will have a tripple by pass on Monday and my

> mother still has called no one, her therapst is on my list of

calls.

> How do I get it across to these people that her behaviour is

> increassingly damaging to her family. I would like to say it is

her

> age but only in that her time is shorter and her goal to seek and

> dystroy more focused. >While they offer support to me for her

> ruthless actions what I want is an admission of an illnees and

family

> intervention. That seems unlikely as it violates her rights.

> Vicki

> > >

> > >

[Guest guest]

> Vicki,

>

> I understand your anger that your mother didn't call you, or

anyone.

> Especially if you believe she is doing this to destroy you or make

> you look bad. That just hurts big time!

>

> What kind of family intervention are you hoping for the mental

health

> clinic to do? I'm not clear on that.

>

> Free

>

> ---

Dear Free,

I would like them to call a family meeting/without my mother and tell

my daughters and me, together, what my mother's mental condition is

and what they feel we should be expecting from her. In easy words,

like your mother has an disorder? that cause's her to distort the

truth and play people against one another, this disorder is not going

to change but you can change as a family by knowing that she may/will

cause problems between you if she can keep you from communicating

with one another. She has been doing this for years and it would

make some sence for the 3 of you to have a few family therpy sessions.

They could explain some of the reality of personality disorders, like

the need to control. Am I asking the impossible? What I hear

is " you can only change your own reaction, not someone else's. " And

by the time I am finished argueing that point the time is up.

I am already fed up with the whole thing and see it as a money making

job that has no authority to expose her mental problems to her family

unless we try to have her declared incompetent.

Cheers, Vicki

[Guest guest]

Viki

What I hear

is " you can only change your own reaction, not someone else's. "

Cheers, Vicki

Vicki,

This is not true. By changing how you choose to react someone you throw them

off kilter and they will react differently. It still may not be positive, but it

will definitely be different. I read this a long time ago and tested it. It

works every time.

Debbie K.

Send questions and/or concerns to ModOasis-owner

" Stop Walking on Eggshells, " a primer for non-BPs, can be ordered via

1-888-35-SHELL () and for the table of contents, go to:

http://www.BPDCentral.com

[Guest guest]

I wish I could have had that type of info growing up.

> Dear Free,

> I would like them to call a family meeting/without my mother and tell

> my daughters and me, together, what my mother's mental condition is

> and what they feel we should be expecting from her. In easy words,

> like your mother has an disorder? that cause's her to distort the

> truth and play people against one another, this disorder is not going

> to change but you can change as a family by knowing that she may/will

> cause problems between you if she can keep you from communicating

> with one another. She has been doing this for years and it would

> make some sence for the 3 of you to have a few family therpy sessions.

>

> They could explain some of the reality of personality disorders, like

> the need to control. Am I asking the impossible? What I hear

> is " you can only change your own reaction, not someone else's. " And

> by the time I am finished argueing that point the time is up.

> I am already fed up with the whole thing and see it as a money making

> job that has no authority to expose her mental problems to her family

> unless we try to have her declared incompetent.

> Cheers, Vicki