grief

The Centrality of Safety

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, love, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

The more I do this work of psychotherapy, augmented by daily life experience, I see that safety is central to life, and any abridgement of safety causes alarm in a person’s psychological state, which then causes alarm in one physical state and one social system. In other words, I need to be safe first and foremost. Allow me to discuss this matter of safety, and of course, the lack of safety. When I do not feel safe, I feel the emotion of fear. In a nutshell, when I feel safe, my body, mind, emotions, and social life can work at their best, but when I don’t feel safe, all four of these basic elements of life are harmed in some way.

Where does this matter of safety originate?

Safety originates (ideally) in utero, i.e. in mother’s uterus (womb). Then, when born, safety remains the main ingredient (ideally) for the infant’s first year of life. Infants need three elements to survive infancy: safety, nurturance, and comfort…in that order. If an infant is not safe, that infant will most likely die, perhaps physically as her brain will begin to withdraw from life, or at the very least she will become so impaired in life so as to have a life that is something other than living. I will get back to this “something other than living” in a moment. If an infant feels safe, all else can begin to work and prepare that infant for the rest of life, which means feeling, thinking, relating, working, and playing. The infant doesn’t recognize any of these things, of course, but rather simply notices when she is safe and when she is not safe. Enter the central emotion of fear in human development. The other necessary ingredients of an infant’s life, namely nurturance (food) and (physical) comfort, should naturally follow in infancy because if either of these elements is missing, the infant will also be impaired. We might call these three elements, safety, nurturance, and comfort, elements and expressions of love. No parents are perfect in caring for their infants, so no infant comes out having had the perfect supply of these ingredients of love, no matter how hard parents try to love their children.

We will not fully discuss the matters of nurturance and comfort leaving that discussion for another time as we focus on the lack of safety being so central in a person’s life beginning in infancy. Parents who have watched their infants approach toddlerhood beginning in the second year of life, have observed how the infant can cry out of genuine fear and then later learn to cry when the infant just wants attention. The careful parent learns to distinguish between these cries, while some parents come running every time the infant cries. When this happens, the infant retains the unfortunate “feeling,” if we call it that, that she can get attention by crying. Do you know people, children, adolescents, or adults, who comes to tears every time they don’t get what they want? Furthermore, the child who has received too much attention, does not adequately develop ways to feel safe without the necessity of external safety. The larger problem that occurs with the matter of safety in infancy is the lack of adequate parents providing external safety.

What happens when an infant does not receive the basic ingredients of a successful infancy?

  • If the infant does not feel safe in infancy, she will likely have a dominant emotion of fear, perhaps for the rest of her life. We will discuss what might happens when an individual begins post-infancy without having felt safe in infancy.
  • If the infant not properly nourished, the infant will remain “hungry” the rest of her life, a hunger that then gravitates towards things, people, or ideas.
  • If the infant is not properly comforted, that infant will then be impaired in the matter of comfort. Some people who come into adult life with the condition of not having been comforted become unduly dependent on other people, while others become unable to be comforted.
  • We can conjecture that the origin of addictions, both chemical and behavioral, result from the lack of one of these three necessary ingredients of infancy. Thus, people seek some way of assuaging their lack of safety, nurturance, and/or comfort by finding counterfeits of these elements in addictions.

Addictions as ways of compensating for the lack of proper infantile care

I am using the term “addictions” rather broadly, not specifically as defined by addictionologists. I see anything that takes me away from the good life of feeling, thinking, doing, and relating as a kind of addiction. The addiction serves as a replacement for the missing ingredients of early life, often the life of an infant. Before we examine addictions resulting from this lack, we need to examine some other possibilities that cause a person to feel unsafe in life.

It is possible that undue fear displayed in adult life actually originates before birth, i.e. in utero. Many things can complicate pregnancy and possibly cause an undue amount of fear. These include mother’s mood, which most certainly causes hormonal changes in the fetus, but of course, these moods could be joyful, sad, angry, or fearful. There could be some kind of illness that mother has during pregnancy, or the infant might suffer some kind of medical abnormality, maybe just turning around in the womb temporarily limiting the flow of nutrients from the umbilical cord. I have met people who seem to display a kind of fear that seems to predate infancy and might be in utero in origin.

Addictions can be chemical (alcohol, street drugs, and food predominantly) or behavior (sexual, gambling, working, or playing predominantly. Let me provide some examples of how people have compensated for the lack of safety in infancy by finding some sort of addictive substance or behavior. We will not discuss addictions that might result from a lack of nurturance or comfort at this time.

  • Jim had two predominant addictions: alcohol and sex. Sex was demonstrated in promiscuity. As I looked deep into Jim’s background I could not see how these addictions might have come from a lack of safety, but I did see that he seemed “to be at his best” when he was promiscuous or under the undue influence of alcohol.
  • Sally seemingly came from a “good and loving family” but she was “addicted” to fixing her husband, from what he did, to what he wore, to what he said. When she did not get what she thought was “good for him and us”, she fell into tears. I suspect that she was deprived of safety in some way
  • Ben admits to “being addicted to sex (pornography and masturbation mostly), marijuana, food, and attention. His background clearly reveals a lack of safety in his early life.
  • Peter is addicted to having enough money in his life. I was amazed to hear from him that he “could not survive” with less than $200K annual income claiming openly that he “was raised in poverty, came close to being homeless twice, and would never be in poverty again). His wife, children, friendships, and personal satisfaction suffered greatly because of his desire for money.
  • Sam is also addicted to money, but more than money, he is addicted to work and to the approval that he seems to need. He readily admits that he is still striving for his father’s approval even though his father died years ago.
  • Mike is addicted to alcohol, marijuana, approval, and sex. He has been in a female relationship largely because he “doesn’t want to be alone,” and smokes pot or drinks alcohol as a way of assuaging his insecurities. He also has a kind of addiction to play, which means that he would rather do play than work, perhaps because he doesn’t know what he will do when he grows up. He is 35.

These are but a few examples of the adults I see with what seems to be an underlying fear component, possibly coming from infancy but perhaps just as possibly from later years of toddlerhood, childhood, or adolescence. One of the predominant elements of fear coming to dominate an individual is the lack of appropriate freedom and limitation in early childhood. While infancy is a time when fear is the dominant emotion, the four years of years when joy, anger, and sadness need to develop.

Fear that can originate in post-infant years of 2-6

We have four basic emotions. These emotions develop in four stages:

  • Fear: primarily in the first year of life. This feeling keeps an infant alive because when he feels something that is life-threatening, like being hunger, he will cry. Crying keeps him alive. If he didn’t have the ability to cry, he would not survive infancy. Thus, fear is the most central emotion that we have. The rest of life ideally mitigates the centrality of fear, but fear is not something that is wrong with us. It is something that is right with us, at least in its origin, namely in infancy.
  • Joy: primarily in the second year of life. About the time a child turns one, he begins to actually love, something he has not really done during his first year of life. He loves his kitten, his blanket, his parents, or a toy. He loves certain kinds of food, and he loves some kind of physical touch. All of these things, whether alive or not, spur the one-year old and two-year old to love and to enjoy what he loves.
  • Anger: primarily in the years 2-5. These are difficult years for everyone, both for the child and for his parents. Now he can walk, run, talk, sing, yell and scream. The fact that he has a lot more mobility gives him more things to love, and hence a lot more joy, but his mobility and verbal ability also gives him a lot of losses, a lot of limitations, and a lot of boundaries. Where during the first year of life where he got almost everything he wanted, and the second year of life when he got most of what he wanted, now he doesn’t get much of what he wants. Why? Because he wants more. He doesn’t know that he wants more. All he feels is something is terribly wrong with the world because he used to get almost everything he wanted and now he doesn’t get most of what he wants. So, he gets angry. Anger is the real starting point of what we call self. Anger distinguishes us from our surroundings and is very important. “Self” started a bit in infancy and then a lot more in the second year of life, but solid self has to do with me being different from the world, separated from the world, and somewhat on my own. It is not the “terrible twos” of life but rather the terrible threes, fours, and fives.
  • Sadness: starting about age 6. While fear is the most central emotion we have, sadness is the most important one. It is important because absolutely everything that I love in life, be it people, place, thing, or idea, I will lose…eventually. Sadness is central to cope with the losses I have every day, whether the simple loss of coffee spilled on my shirt or the loss of my dear friend in a car accident. I need to learn to be sad, cherish the love that is always underneath sadness, and find ways to “finish” being sad. That often doesn’t happen.

Emotion in the rest of life.

If I get through these stages adequately, I have all these emotions in place in my soul, feel them naturally, value them explicitly, express them appropriately, and govern them carefully. Our present concern is for the basic feeling of safety that is so important in life, which would ideally lead to a life where I feel a minimum about of fear, a minimum amount of anger, and a great deal of joy and sadness. Most people have not properly migrated through these stages of emotional growth so that they can get to a place where they feel joy and sorrow. Rather, they are riddled with fear or they are too often angered. Anger is hard to manage, reduce, and ultimately conquer, but fear is by far the most difficult emotion to govern and also to manage and reduce in life. A daily life should ideally be something like this:

  • I get up in the morning:
    • I didn’t sleep well, so I am disappointed (sad) that I must proceed with the day not having had a good night sleep
    • I slept well and feel joyful, ready to approach the day.
  • I eat breakfast:
    • I spill coffee on my pants and have to change quickly (sad)
    • I am hungry and breakfast is truly satisfying (joy)
  • I drive to work:
    • I get stuck in traffic and am late for my first obligation (sad)
    • I listen to an interesting NPR broadcast and feel enlivened (joy)
  • I work:
    • I have to do several cold calls and receive 90% rejections (sad)
    • I make more sales that I have made in a year (joy)
  • I come home:
    • I hear on the radio that Russia has invaded the Ukraine (sad)
    • I somehow just feel good about the day and decide stop for a quick end-of-the-day espresso (joy)
  • I watch a bit of TV:
    • I realize that I forgot to record a program that is important to me (sad)
    • I watch a really fun comedy that makes me feel wonderful (joy)
  • I get a call from a friend:
    • He tells me that his son has been in a serious accident (sad)
    • He tells me that his wife and he have just won the lottery (joy)

This is the ideal way to face these joys and sorrow in life, but what can happen instead?

I get afraid or I get angry. By the way, all anger is precipitated by fear in some way: I hear, see, or think about something untoward, get afraid of what might happen, and then get angry…in about a half second. So, in the above circumstances where I should have ideally simply been sad, I got afraid or angry. Angry at myself because I spilled coffee on my pants, angry at Russia, angry, etc. Then, I get scared. Scared that I have ruined my pants, scared that Russia invade Minnesota, scared that I will lose this or that. Whether scared or angry, I have avoided the feeling of sadness.

How these emotions work together

Sometimes we have a predominant emotion that works alone, but that is not usually the case:

  • We may feel overjoyed at winning a game, being at a human birth, or seeing a wonderful rainbow
  • We may feel profoundly sad at a loss of a good friend
  • We may feel genuine fear when we hear a loud noise while walking in a dark alley
  • We may feel genuine anger when we are accosted by someone in that alley

More often, however, these emotions come in pairs:

  • Fear and anger are always a pair and are often felt simultaneously. The guy who accosts me in the alley scares me but my anger takes hold at the same time and I fight back
  • When I experience an important loss, say, a person, I feel both joy at having loved the person and sadness at having lost her.
  • Importantly, I cannot feel both sadness and fear at the same time
  • Neither can I feel sadness and anger at the same time

I have learned many times that a patient of mine feels anxiety (fear) when they come into my office, and then after a few minutes of good therapy, they feel sadness, they no longer feel any anxiety. This is quite a remarkable phenomenon, and they are often surprised at feeling no anxiety. Thus, I can honestly say, sadness cures anxiety. Anxiety is always about the potential of losing something, so if I can feel that potential loss, I will feel anticipatory sadness. This is an odd experience feeling sad now for something that I might lose in the future. It works.

Likewise, sadness cures anger. Anger is about something that I have lost in the past, the past being a few minutes ago or years ago. If I can feel the sadness of having lost what I loved (person, place, or thing), I will feel nostalgia, which is the two components of love: joy and sadness. I will not feel anger, but this, of course, is hard to do because a part of me wants to stay angry.

We say that anxiety are “delusional.” If I get angry, I will delusionally change the past. If I worry, I will delusionally change the future. Both are delusions. Unfortunately, they are delusions that are quite common with our culture and with most people.

What can I do to effectively use these four emotions?

This is a process that takes a good deal of time, effort, and generally good therapy. The process is quite simple but very hard to do because there are forces within you and outside of you that work against this process:

  • Notice what you feel, whether fear, anger, joy or sadness. Remember that all of these emotions have to do with what you love.
    • If you are afraid, note that you are afraid of losing something that you love.
    • If you are angry, you have lost something that you love
    • If you are joyful, you have something that you love
    • If you are sad, you are experiencing the loss of something that you leave
  • When you have these emotions:
    • Allow joy to last as long as your soul wants to last
    • Allow sadness to last as long as your soul wants it to last
    • If you are angry, realize that you have lost something that you have loved. The more you do this, the less you will feel angry.
    • If you are afraid, realize that you might lose something that you love. Allow yourself to think of that possible loss and allow yourself to feel anticipatory sadness.
  • If it is the right time and the right place and you are with the right person, tell that person that you are experiencing a “love problem” in the form of joy, sadness, anger, or fear

The ideal life is one with about equal amounts of joy and sadness. The more you get under fear and anger, the more you will feel both joy and anger, whether about the past (instead of anger) or the future (instead of anxiety). Joy and sadness always end. Fear and anger can go on forever.

The more you practice seeing the love under all these emotions, the happier you will be. And the sadder you will be.

You’re Killing Me

Ron Johnson communication, emotional maturity, grief, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Have you ever said, “You’re killing me,” to anyone? Or perhaps some cognate of this expression like, “I’m dying here” or “I can’t live through this.” Or perhaps, you just thought such things and never actually said them to anyone. These kinds of statements can be frivolous, like being with someone who is severely besting you on the tennis court or in your sales department. It could even be a statement you might make with a project that you need to complete, whether at the office or a book you’re writing. As I say that, I am immediately reminded of the hard work Deb and I recently put in on the finishing touches, review, and revision of our latest book. My interest in the “you’re killing me” or its cognates like, “She’s killing him” or “She’s dying under his attention” or less damaging, “He’s killing her with kindness.’ The interest I have in this blog is to address the very real fact that people are, indeed, killing one another but not with kindness, meanness, guns, or pills but with being a severe emotional drain on them. Let me explain.

Kinds of “killing”

  • Caring for a physically impaired person
  • Caring for a mentally impaired person
  • Being in an intimate relationship with someone who is toxic
  • Being in a work setting that is toxic for you
  • Being in an environment that is toxic for you
  • Being toxic to yourself

In all of these circumstances there is never any conscious malicious attempt to “kill” someone. Yet there is a subtle effect that someone, someone, or you yourself has on you. Very importantly, there is rarely an actual intent to do harm to someone by the “killer.” They are not trying to kill someone or even bring them harm. Sometimes, like the “killing with kindness” is meant to do the very opposite. In most cases the “killer” is trying to survive in some way without actually meaning to do the “victim” any damage. These cases are like the proverbial person who can’t swim but drags someone down the water in an attempt to stay alive. The lack of intention to bring harm is central to the case I wish to bring here together with some possible understanding and remedies for such things. I would like you to be alive.

Examples of people being “killed” by the people in their lives:

  • A pastor who has been working diligently, perhaps too diligently, to serve people in his congregation found himself emotionally spent but kept up his work only to recently be in a meeting where the congregation identified the “administration” (which means he) needed to be changed. In simple terms the congregation (by a very slim majority) of voting people (not all of whom had been in church for years) voted against him. In this case he was assaulted by several people whom he had diligently tried to serve over the years he was at this church. When I saw him recently, he admitted that he felt like so many people feel: he didn’t want to live. Not that he wanted to die or that he was suicidal but he felt like he was dying or would rather not live because his profession and his livelihood had been taken away from him. His antagonist people in church are “killing” him.
  • Another pastor (yes, I see such people frequently) has cancer and the “numbers” are not good. He and his wife have been married more than 50 years and have served many churches, raised children, and have done well in their denomination. Due to what we might call too much kindness, this pastor was unable to deny his wife anything over these 50 years and ended up now well into retirement with an excessive amount of debt. The debt load has been hard to bear over the recent years, and importantly, his wife didn’t really that their purchases and traveling were on credit cards, now towering over them. I think some of his cancer has actually been exacerbated and to some degree caused as the result of his being overwhelmed by the debt. Perhaps more importantly, however, he has suffered under the nearly constant, but subtle attack from his wife of leaving them in such a state instead of enjoying being fun-loving grandparents. Most markedly, when I recently saw them together, the wife was far more worried about being “straddled with debt when her husband dies” than actually concerned about his health. I think she has been “killing” him for years, only now being quite obvious.
  • My brother died nearly 25 years ago at age 59 from cancer, but it is my belief that the people in his life “killed” him, albeit without their intention or his knowledge. Bill cared for our aging, mother who suffered from debilitating Alzheimer’s disease for perhaps five years. There is a good bit of research on the care of severely impaired people, whether the impairment is physical, mental, or otherwise. Caregivers actually die sooner than they should die, or at the very least suffer physical and mental diseases as a result of caring for their loved ones. So, my mother “killed” Bill, at least to some degree, certainly without any intention to do so. Caring for a person suffering from dementia is like caring for a two-year old with a 70-year old body. It’s a chore. Additionally, my brother suffered for being with a mentally disturbed individual in his life whom we might say put a “drain” on him, perhaps “draining” him of his ability to sustain life. Indeed, he died specifically from liver cancer but it is my belief that the disease was exacerbated or perhaps caused by the mental strain of caring for people whom he loved but who were impaired.
  • I see many people in my practice who are caring for impaired people, and all of them suffer. The woman who graciously adopted a young man who had been abandoned by his parents in India only to discover that this 13-year old had a mind of a 4-year old, and was found to have sexually molested several other children. He is “killing” his mother.
  • I know of a child who was so outrageous and demanding that he was partly due to the early demise of his mother who died at 45, possibly due to the strain of trying to love and limit this child who was so demanding of her. Of course, he has no idea of the damage that he caused his mother nor would I say such a thing to him, but I am convinced that this young man, possibly in conjunction with his equally impaired sister, caused the demise of their mother.
  • I have not spoken of the sad fact that there are some truly dangerous people in the world, like abusive husbands and wives, fathers or mothers, and the like. Certainly, there are these people.
  • I have felt that someone was “killing me” a couple times in my recent life. One was a time when the two closest members of my family behaved in a way that I felt quite rejected. I didn’t feel “suicidal” but there was a kind of “I could die and that might be not so bad.” These feelings lasted for about an hour as I took a long walk. The feelings past but the memory remains as an important time in my life. I told my wife about the experience. She said that she had had a similar experience not so long ago. We are not immune to such feelings but have a way of processing them.
  • Many men have said “I don’t want to live,” sometimes with my assistance for them to admit to these feelings. These people don’t want to die and they are certainly not suicidal. They just feel quite overwhelmed in life for some reason.

Examples of situations that “kill” people

  • I know of several men who are in jobs that they hate, some of these men making a great deal of money. It seems odd to me that a person stay in a job that he hates “for the money” or allegedly doing it “for the family.” Sadly, I know of several men who have stayed with such jobs and ultimately lost their physical health, mental health, property, or marriages because these jobs were killing them.
  • Other situations that are non-personal include projects people do, perhaps on houses, cars, money, weather, or some event in the world far away.
    • I felt quite distressed during a time when we were in the midst of a kitchen remodeling project somewhat due to delays from the tradesmen, somewhat because it wasn’t my desire to do the project, and perhaps form some other unknown projects.
    • People often feel that they are “being killed” by unforeseen weather, not necessarily a tornado but just some kind of extension of undue heat or cold
    • People often feel “killed” by their lack of money, perhaps enough to just pay the bills of life and limb.
  • People often feel that they are dying because of some physical/medical condition and perhaps treatment. I understand the “chemo” treatment for cancer seems worse than the cancer. I just talked to someone with a variety of things going on with his body, any of which could be life-taking. Interestingly, people can be quite at peace at what might seem to be the end of their lives compared to some kind of debilitating disorder or disability.
  • There several verses in the Bible of God “killing” people, usually “enemies” like in the Hebrew Scriptures, but even more dramatic statements that are unique to the New Testament. It seems that the writer of these verses felt God killing him.

How to handle “you’re killing me” feelings

  • Know that these feelings are quite normal
  • Know that the word “killing” and its cognates is an attempt by the person to present a metaphor, strong as it might be, to him/herself or to someone else. We try to give people a “wide berth” as we often say, when they seek to say some “feeling.” “You’re killing me” is such a statement
  • Be careful to whom you say such things. If you feeling like you “don’t want to live,” be even more careful to whom you say such a thing. The listener has to know this is a feeling, not a fact, not a plan.
  • Do find someone who can hear such things. This would be someone who could hear the feeling and not conclude the fact that the feeling words seemed to suggest.
  • In the rare case where you are in some real danger, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, find a way out whatever the case

 

Thriving and Surviving

Ron Johnson addictions, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

Some years ago I asked to talk to an African American man who had written a number of pieces in the local paper. In my email I said that although I had two Black sons in law and had Black men occasionally come to my office, I often felt that I was missing something important about the Black subculture, namely how Blacks actually engage in conversation, friendship, and intimacy. Intimacy is the heart of any good therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient. I was to meet him in a local café. I had been interested in some of the things he had said about his work, which was essentially with primarily Black kids. When I entered the café, he waved at me and invited me to come to the table where he was sitting with a friend/colleague (who happened to be White) with whom he had been working for a few years. As I approached the table and had not yet sat down, he volunteered something that has stuck with me since our meeting although I have not had contact with this man since. He said something like, “I want to start by saying that you look confident and a man who is thriving in life. If you want to know that your very appearance suggests thriving and it is off-putting. I have lived in an environment that has been one of surviving, not thriving.” I was not offended by his comment, but I did take a figurative step back from the conversation because I had never heard of the difference between thriving and surviving, and I immediately knew that I had not been raised in a survival context. This matter of surviving has continued to be an important aspect of my understanding people, to some degree the subcultures of America like the African American culture, but in a larger context of how many people engage life: they are surviving. Let’s look at the whole business of thriving and surviving that people do. There are many people who survive terrible ordeals, like physical illness or even war, but my focus will be primarily on people who survive through emotional challenges.

People who are surviving

  • People with physical limitations
    • Blindness
    • Debilitating illnesses like cancer and heart disease
    • Physical disabilities
  • People with household difficulties
    • Financial limitations or challenges’
    • Deteriorating living quarters
    • No living quarters
  • People who interpersonal difficulties
    • One partner is seriously physically limited
    • One partner wants out of the relationship
    • One partner is unfaithful
    • One partner is addicted to some behavior or chemical
    • Partners have substantially different religious/philosophical orientations
    • Partners have a cognitively impaired child, which causes them to frequently be at odds with each other
    • Partner one does not like the biological family of partner two. Makes Christmas celebrations difficult
  • And many other difficulties that people need to manage by surviving

People who are surviving personal matters

  • Jack is unable to conquer his addition to one of the following: alcohol, drugs, food, promiscuity, gambling, video game playing, other screen time, working, playing, toxic relationships, or sleeping (too much or not enough)
  • Marge is generally not happy with herself. She thinks she is stupid.
  • Peter is not happy with himself. He thinks he is smarter than everyone
  • Both Marge and Peter are lonely
  • Stan continues to pine for the woman he thinks he should have married, a feeling that makes life difficult for him and secondarily and unconsciously for his wife
  • Dad doesn’t really like his son. Thinks that he is too much like his wife
  • Mom really favors daughter # 1 over daughter #2 because she is more like #1

The ways people survive these difficulties

In a nutshell, they avoid them. The essence of avoiding these difficulties means that they avoid the feelings associated with these difficulties. When they don’t finish the feelings associated the challenges, these feelings stay with them. These feelings then become repressed. It wouldn’t be so bad if these feelings stayed repressed but that is not what happens. The feeling show themselves in things they say or do. When they are speaking or doing something that is a result of not having felt through these feelings, they are accommodating. Very likely, they are not aware that they are accommodating. What happens is that the things they say or things they do are coming indirectly from the repressed feelings without their conscious knowledge. It just “feels right” to say something or do something that may seem quite odd or offense to other people. What are the things that they do to accommodate?

Accommodation

Depending on the individual, the subculture that they live in, the people they live with, the work they do, they play they do, or the any environment where they live, there are many possibilities of accommodation including:

  • Being distrustful of everyone
  • Being dishonest, or at least easily dishonest when they run into some kind of challenge
  • Fall into some addiction, chemical or behavioral
  • Become isolated. Introverted people tend to isolate
  • Become very active. Extraverted people tend to talk a lot
  • Fall into depression
  • Fall into a generalized anxiety
  • Take some kind of radical action
  • Take some kind of radical philosophical or religious orientation

To avoid these unfortunate accommodations, what can people do to move from surviving to thriving?

Positive coping mechanisms

  • Without a doubt, the most important thing for a person to do when he or she has faced with the trauma that caused the person to survive is to face the trauma and understand that they were in a dangerous or untenable situation and they did what they needed to do to survive. This takes away the false guilt of being a bad person.
  • Grieve the loss of what happened. This is easier said than done. It is hard enough to face the violence of sexual abuse or any other kind of abuse. It is much harder to face traumata that occurred over a longer period of time or traumata that occurred to one’s family or one’s heritage. How will Palestinians cope with the trauma of being assaulted? How Israelis cope with their traumata? How will Black people face the trauma of slavery that occurred for 300 years and the aftermath of racism for another 100 years?
  • Most people need a confident, which could be a good friend, family member, therapist, or clergy person to do this kind of grief work.
  • Slowly replace surviving words and activities with thriving activities.
    • Being more honest
    • Being more trusting
    • Taking a chance with some activity like work school, friends
    • Facing and overcoming addictions whatever they may be
    • Finding a community of people who have moved from surviving to thriving

I wish you a time when you can achieve a life of thriving, which of course, will be imperfect. It will also be more honest, graceful, and peaceful. But it will also be sadder as you see that you lose things every day and have disappointments every day.

And I wish you a wonderful holiday season.