Oh WOW! - violence

Altering the Fear with Drugs; A Good Thing?

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:57:57 GMT

An article came out on Times Online this week about how scientists have discovered a way to alter our experience of traumatic material with the use of drugs. The article addressed this issue as if it were a new idea, and that some might find the whole idea offensive. The news of the advantageous aspects of using Propranolol to reduce PTSD is not new. I recall hearing about it back in 2001, and there is an article online from Harvard Magazine from 2004.

Indeed it seems there is at least one person who thinks this is a bad idea. Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland is as credible as sources can get; on paper. But when you start reading his works you realize what a yahoo he is in reality. In a recent paper he says, "It is my opinion that MPD is another behavioral disorder - a socially created artifact - in distressed people who are looking for help. The diagnosis and subsequent procedures for exploring MPD give them a coherent posture toward themselves and others as a particular kind of patient: "sick" certainly, "victim" possibly. This posture, if sustained, will obscure the real problems in their lives and render psychotherapy long, costly, and pointless. If the customary treatments of hysteria are provided, then we can expect that the multiple personality behaviors will be abandoned and proper rehabilitative attention can be given to the patient."

As if that weren't bad enough, in yet another article he denies the reality of the PTSD diagnosis itself. He says, "It might be expected that ‘traumatologists’ would be cautious in diagnosing a person as having PTSD upon realising that it lacks a specific aetiology and is possibly not a distinct syndrome."

So when this yahoo says, (of Propranolol) “If soldiers did something that ended up with children getting killed, do you want to give them beta-blockers so that they can do it again?” asks Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and a member of the US President's Council on Bioethics. “Psychiatrists are once again marching in where angels fear to tread.” What possible credibility can this guy have?

He clearly thinks that all of the millions of practitioners who have come to recognize PTSD as the underlying cause of a multitude of neurosis are completely stupid, or just naive enough to believe the pain our clients are experiencing.

Regardless, it is clear that PTSD exists, and that we have to discover ways to prevent it, manage the symptoms, and reduce he suffering of the millions of people who have it. Propranolol seems to offer some remarkable benefits both for the long term after effects and for preventing the development of PTSD symptoms within a window of time after a traumatic event.

What do you think?

Tiger Woods Brain

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:14:56 GMT

Over the last year Mike and I have used Tiger Woods brain as a way to illustrate how a person can learn to calm their primitive brain under stress. The fact that he can do it on the golf course but can't do it in his personal life (so it would seem) has me thinking.
The Connection
I don't think he has realized the connection. Tiger's ability to calm his primitive brain down enough to always (or almost always) hit the ball well even when millions of dollars are at stake, is legendary. Few other athletes have done it as consistently as Tiger. Yet, in full view of his fans, Tiger has let his primitive brain run amok.

In the wee hours of the morning of November 27th, Tiger slammed into fire hydrant and a tree. Witness's say that he was in an argument with Erin, his wife. My heart aches for him. I know how painful it is to get into that kind of altercation with someone you love. Though, if its true that the lacerations on his face could have been from their altercation and not the crash, it's a pain I have not suffered myself.
What really tugs at my heart is the reality of their pain, and how easily it could have been different. Couples who experience a weekend of the Awakened Heart Workshop with Mike and I can maneuver through primitive brain reactivity with much less upset than can other couples.

I wish someone would refer them to us!

Women Perpetrators? Is it a far fetched Idea?

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:24:08 GMT

ABC Online's SCOTT MICHELS, SARAH NETTER, LAURA MARQUEZ and SABINA GHEBREMEDHIN seem to think the idea of a woman being a sexual perpetrator is far fetched. Do you? I suspect most people find the idea rather rediculous. In our culture women are, as Michels, Netter, Marquez and Ghebremdhin suggest, seen as nurturers and not violent or sexual perpetrators.

Throughout the article, Why Do Some Women Kill, they search for explanations as to why a woman could possibly become so strangely perverse as to do what Melissa Huckaby, a Sunday school teacher and the mother apparently did, which was to rape and kill one of her daughter's friends. The authors of this article propose that maybe she is just covering up for her daughter having accidentally killed the girl, or maybe she just got carried away in the interrogation and said things that are not true. Whether or not Ms Huckaby is guilty of the crimes, it is obvious from this incident that most of us will go to extraordinary lengths to rationalize that a woman could not possibly do what Ms Huckaby admitted to having done.

It’s ironic, too, because just today I read on UPI about a woman in Russia capturing a man trying to rob her beauty salon. Seems she tied him up with a hair dryer cord, fed him Viagra and forced him to have sex with her for two days until she was apprehended and charged with rape.

Both articles are evidence that women are indeed capable of doing things sexually perverted and acting as perpetrators of sexual abuse. Does this shake up your belief system? I know it does for a lot of people.

The idea that women could do such horrendous acts was beyond my own belief until I began working with sexual abuse survivors more than 20 years ago. Slowly but surely I began to accept the truth of what my clients were telling me. In spite of what statistics will show us, I have every reason to believe that women perpetrate as much violence and sexual abuse on their children as do men.

I know it’s a radical statement to make and statistics being what they are, will not back me up. But statistics rely on one important measure: self-report or outright evidence. In my experience the victims of female perpetrated crimes will not admit to having been perpetrated by a woman for lots of socially understandable reasons. In our culture, as the ABC article states are thought of as being the "nurturer" and to accept, even for ourselves, that what our mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers did to us was abusive flies in the face of our most sacred beliefs about woman's role in society. This is also why, even when a victim risks ridicule, rejection and dismissal to tell someone of their abuse by a woman, they are exponentially less likely to be believed.

Until we can begin to look at what I firmly believe to be absolute truth, that women are as guilty of sexual, physical and verbal abuse and violence as are men, the cycle of abuse and violence that plagues our world will never be eradiated.

What do you think? Has a woman in your life ever beaten, hit, screamed at, emotionally, verbally, or sexually abused you in any way? Do you think it's impossible? Improbable? Comment below. This is an incredibly important topic.

Domestic Abuse Myths

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:15:24 GMT

Five mistakes we make when we talk about Rihanna and Chris
Brown's relationship.
Today on the newsweek site Raina Kelley's article, "Domestic Abuse Myths" appeared on the web. She is right is some ways, of course, there is a cycle that happens when abuse is taking place and both parties take part in it. She is also correct in that no one should ever have to accept physical abuse from another person and the "Injured Party" has to get help.

It's also interesting to note that while the larger the person is the more dmage they can do; there are plenty of cases of women being perpetrators of physical abuse to their spouses as well. These cases to not result in arrests or taking pity on the injured party since they cannot do as much physical damage. Plus, men tend to get laughed at if they complain about a woman abusing them. But the dynamic of physical abuse happens to both men and women. It's just not "manly" to consider yourself as having been abused by a woman."

The thing is, there are five major mistakes when the media and others talk about what transpired between Chris Brown and Rihanna.

Mistake #1 Blame
Its easy to blame the perpetrator of abuse for the incident. Its easy to see them as the bad guy because they, clearly, were the ones that lost control and caused physical injury to the other person. But the reality is, both parties are always a part of the cycle and can and do learn to change from a posture of blame and fault to one of empathy and compassion.

Mistake #2 Considering yourself a Victim
Both parties feel like Victims. When you consider yourself to be a "Victim" of someone else, and the world at large supports that position, you are powerless to do anything to change what is happening. You are innocent and have no power in the situation. That's what defines a victim isn't it?

Several years ago Oprah had a show on domestic violence perpetrators. She went to a facilty where men were being treated and given help for their behaviors. Oprah could not comprehend how these men could possibly behave as they did. One man, who had taken a frying pan to his wife's head, helped her understand. He told her that what happened is that he felt so out of control, so powerless in the situation that he felt driven to do what ever he had to do to make the pain and misery stop. At that moment, Oprah got it. She said, "Oh, it's just like me and food!".

Rihanna, like other adults being abused, have the power and responsibility to learn from what is happening and take action to change. Chris Brown has the power and responsibilty to learn and take action to change. But neither is really a Victim.

Mistake #3 Having No Empathy
Whether you are the person being beaten or the person doing the beating, when abuse occurs, it occurs in the absence of empathy. Neither party has any understanding or empathy of the other person's pain. Someone who strikes out in fear and pain by hitting someone else feels terrified and horribly alone. They feel as if the person who is supposed to love them and understand them has become their enemy by hurting them beyond tolerance. Of course, then the person they hit feels exactly the same way. But the person beaten is clearly the victim, right?

Learning to have empathy for the person doing the hitting is the only way to change the pattern. This is not to say excusing the behavior, but it is to say having empathy for the pain and helping the person change.

On the same Oprah episode, a woman who was in her second marriage and third abusive relationship spoke up. She said (roughly), "I began to recognize that something that was going on had to have something to do with me. This was my third relationship in which I was being hit. I knew this man loved me, but something I was doing had to have something to do with what was going on. When I began to have empathy for what he was going through and how my behavior was impacting him, things began to change."

Mistake #4 Taking No Ownership
When we are in a conflict with someone else, the conflict will escalate out of control if one party refuses to take ownership of their part in the conflict. Ever had a conflict with a business? What makes us irrate is when no one in the company will acknowledge that we have been injured.

In the past few years, hospitals have begun to implement a policy of telling patients who have been injured by malpractice or neglect that they are sorry this happened. The hospitals have recognized that by accepting responsibility they are much less likely to incur legal action if they accept responsibiity than if they do not. This goes against traditional legal views, but is in fact born out in actual statistics. Things do not escalate if when ownership is accepted.

Mistake #5 Not Respecting
When someone goes to the hospital with injuries, like Rihanna, or shows up with blackened eyes we assume they had no responsibilty in what occurred and they are incapable of having protected themselves. This is remarkably disrepectful of the person. Obviously Rihanna is substantially smaller than Chris Brown, and in an argument turned physical, he clearly has more physical power. But that does not mean she was powerless.

When we, as a culture, decide that someone is powerless, we remove any potential for them to behave in responsible ways for themselves. The result is that we actually cripple them by encouraing them to see themselves as having no power or responsiibility in their situation. Like the woman on Oprah, Rihanna has to learn how her behaviors impact the relationship and how she can shift her awareness to change the dynamic between the two of them. Otherwise if its not Chris Brown the next time, it will be someone else.

Simple Model Not Easy
This simple model, "The Cycles of the Heart" can transform how we experience conflict and our most intimate relationships. It can literally change everything in how we respond to ourselves and the world. But, while it is simple, it is not easy to do. It requires shifting how we have viewed ourselves and our world. It's no small task.

What Do You Think?
Have you been a victim of abuse? Have you perpetrated abuse? Do you think I am dead wrong or right on? Let me know. Comment below.

Dr. Phil, Please Get Some Help!

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:40:34 GMT

Speaking up

Okay, I know no one is a “bad guy” but I have to seriously question the health and intentions of Dr. Phil. He is in serious need of some kind of intervention. He is likable and has a lot of smart, pithy things to say, but he has crossed over the line. I was getting my nails done last week and was forced to listen to his show. He had some sort of “Retreat” program with 16 people going through his “program”.

TV Therapy

What a lot of people don’t know is that to be able to go on TV and intervene with people the way he is doing, you have to give up your licensure as a professional. Dr. Phil is an unlicensed psychologist. There is nothing wrong with that, per se, but people should know that he is not licensed and that it is for a reason.

Professional counseling and psychology licenses attempt to regulate what it is okay to do and what is NOT okay to do. Professionals lose their license when they do something that is considered to be inappropriate or unethical of a professional. Dr. Phil’s doing therapy on national television is considered to be unethical, that is why it’s forbidden for license holders.

Dr. Phil’s Retreat

On this ‘retreat” program I suffered through I watched innocent people going through hell. Dr. Phil used his undue influence to coerce these people into revealing the most intimate details of their lives and trauma history in front of millions of people. Okay, he was trying to get the point across that being victimized is not the defining thing about us as human beings. His point is when we hold the secret in our entire lives and let it dominate our emotional lives; it becomes the dominant factor in our lives. The supposed point of this exercise is, we are to believe, getting rid of this excess baggage.

The Problem of National TV Therapy

The problem is multidimensional. To start this, this is therapy and therapy is by necessity something that should be private and confidential. He was doing group therapy on national television, exploiting those peoples pain and suffering for his own ends. He was directly benefiting from their suffering. This is not only unethical; it’s immoral. Now those people will walk down the street and be recognized as “Oh, there is that guy that was raped when he was nine!” How is that going to help rid him of his Victim baggage?

Sure, there will be some short term benefit of relieving oneself of the burden of carrying around the secret, but the long term effects of exposing such vulnerability on the national stage is not something that has been researched. We have no idea how this could impact someone as vulnerable as a severe abuse survivor. Neither does Dr. Phil, what’s more, he obviously doesn’t care. I’m sure his ratings went up and that is what is most important isn’t it?

It’s Exploitation

I am surprised that more counseling and psychology professionals are not as upset by this obvious exploitation of these brave individuals. I can only imagine the amount of pain and suffering they will now have to endure as a result of Dr. Phil’s exploitation of them.

Dr. Phil, Please Get Your Own Help

Of course, I know that anyone causing this much pain to another person has to be holding in a heck of a lot of their own pain. It makes me sad for him. He is out there with the Rescuer mode in his head and in fact injuring people in the process. I suspect he buys his own press, thinking he is this great and helpful person. And this is not to say he hasn’t helped some people, I am quite sure he has. But the reality is that Rescuers do sometimes help people but in the process also injure a lot of people, too. I should know; I spent a lot of my life as a Rescuer.

Is Dr. Phil Injuring or Helping?

Let me know what you think. I am opinionated but not closed-minded. I would love to hear what you think. Comment below.

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Primitive Reactivity Prevails in Olsteen Lawsuit

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:16:36 GMT

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.

Immunity for Abu Ghraib & Iraq Torturers?

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:29:08 GMT

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.

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Conflict in the Workplace

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:38:36 GMT

Zowie, workplace conflict is costly!

Dealing with conflict in the workplace takes up to 60% of human resource managers time, according to an article by Rachel Zupek on Careerbulder.com. And, the number of incidents of employee violence has been increasing.

Her article encourages a sensible approach to dealing with conflict, she gives a list of well researched, common sense ways to deal with conflict. Check them out at cnn.com/living

The article really just skimmed the surface of the issue, of course. But if you really want to fully understand what is happening during workplace conflicts, you need to understand how the Cycle of Egocentrism works.

Conflict Resolution

One of her sources, Gus Stieber, national director of sales for Bensinger, DuPont & Associates, a professional services company says; “Avoid retreating to the safety of withdrawal, avoidance or the simplistic view that your co-worker is a "bad person." Zupek goes on to say “These are defense mechanisms that prevent the resolution of conflict.”

The Cycle of Egocentrism

Here, Stieber is talking about the Cycle of Egocentrism. It’s easy to think we are avoiding this kid of “defense mechanism” but most of the time we do it so automatically we don’t even realize it’s happening. And avoidance is only one of the ways the Cycle of Egocentrism works.

Getting a full understanding of how the Cycle of Egocentrism works is key to managing workplace conflict, and well, any other kind of conflict. When we understand how our brain tricks us into believing our survival is at stake in conflicts we can discover new ways to respond. The Cycle of Egocentrism locks us into believing that there is a good guy, a bad guy and a rescuer in every situation. This old game helped us manage to survive in our old primitive world, but it no longer serves us so well. Most of the time we are not in those kinds of dire circumstances, but our brain fools us into thinking we are. Then we get stuck in certain ways of responding that keep us trapped in conflictual and painful relationships.

Learning how to apply the Cycle of Compassion, the opposite of the Cycle of Egocentrism allows us to have deeper, more meaningful relationships with ourselves and others. It changes everything.

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The Phillly Blame Game

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:57:14 GMT

Blame, blame whose got the blame?

There was a story on CNN this morning about a dozen police officers beating 3 bound “suspects”. This was apparently caught on video so there is no question of what they did. Community leaders are going at it trying to place the blame. Some are blaming it on race, saying the police officers beat them because they are black. Local appear to agree because they claim this happens all the time. The police claim that stress is to blame. The officers involved had just lost one of their own that had been slaughtered on the streets on Saturday. One of their spokesmen claim the murder set the officers up to lose it on the men they were arresting.

Fear

When we understand that fear is always underneath these outbursts it changes everything. The men they arrested had just opened fire on a crowd and this is why the police arrested them in the first place. I can only imagine the adrenalin rush going through these officers after having witnessed this kind of an attack. Granted, they are supposed to be well trained enough to avoid such a travesty, but fear is a primal reaction that often has nothing to do with how we have been trained or even what we believe to be appropriate behavior.

Odds are, the men they arrested were behaving the way they did out of fear as well. I don’t know if they were gang members, but they likely were. Gangs operate entirely out of fear. The whole basis of belonging to a gang is fear. The members are recruited out of fear. When someone is being recruited the gang terrorizes them into joining, then terrorizes them to keep them from leaving. Yet being a member of a gang puts them at risk for attack by opposing gangs, thereby increasing the members fears. Undoubtedly their opening fire on the crowd was motivated by this fear. Perhaps there was gang member from an opposing gang in the crowd who had promised to kill one of the shooters gang members.

Lessons from Iraq

Perhaps we should be learning from General Patraeus in Iraq. He understands that you can’t win a war on tribesmen by going in and blasting them to hell. We have to look at gangs in the exact same way. They are exactly like opposing tribes and if we don’t look at changing the system, in the way General Patraeus is doing, we will continue to have to deal with the kind of horrors highlighted by this attack in Philly.

Compassion

Compassion means letting go of blame. And I don’t mean standing by while people continue to hurt each other – we have to take ownership and protect ourselves and others from people who are afraid and out of control. But we stop the violence with compassion. We take ownership of the need for protection from their violent behavior, but we do it respectfully and with empathy. We recognize that they are afraid and that they are dealing with it in the only way they know how. We respect that they are doing the best they can, in spite of the awfulness of their behavior. We don’t blame them for their fear, we empathize with it and do our best to take ownership of the situation; meaning we try to change whatever it is that is causing the problems.

How do you see it?

This is what General Patraeus is doing. We desperately need to apply the same things to the wars happening everyday here at home. What do you think? Should we just round up all the “bad guys” and put them in jail or should we try to understand what is happening in the bigger picture and address the real problems? Comment below.

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Is Incest Insanity?

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:23:26 GMT

Incest is a mental illness?

Today CNN reports that Josef Fritzi’s lawyer is attempting to get him off with an “insanity” plea. His lawyer, Mayer, said: "I believe that the trigger was a mental disorder, because I can't imagine that someone has sex with his own daughter without having a mental disorder,"

If incest is, as Fritzi’s lawyer claims, a symptom of mental illness then it could change everything about how we view fathers (and mothers) who rape their children. Maybe we should consider that anyone raping anyone is because of a mental illness. Maybe we should consider that anyone killing anyone else has a mental illness, too.

Ooops… I think I agree.

Strange as it seems, I think I agree with Fritzi’s lawyer. He is obviously seriously mentally ill. But then I believe most of those incarcerated are mentally ill. That is however, quite different than being “insane” isn’t it?

What is “Insane” anyway?>

Someone asked me this past week what it is to be “psychotic” which, I think, is what most courts consider the word “insane” to mean. Psychotic, if you have ever seen it, is clearly “insane”. It means that the sufferer has no ability to connect reality with what is happening inside their head. Reality for a psychotic person is what is in their head and it does not match what anyone else perceives. For instance, a woman who seriously believes she is the Queen of England but lives in a mobile home in rural Oklahoma.

While I do believe that Fritzi suffers from some kind of mental illness, I also believe that the world needs to be protected from people that dangerous.

How monsters are made>

When we understand that abuse creates problems for people, emotionally, we understand how monsters like Fritzi are made. Something really awful must have happened to him as a kid to pervert his mind in such a way. He undoubtedly identified with his own perpetrator. What we know is that when someone is a Victim, they tend to choose one of three ways to manage the horror. They will tend to either remain in a Victim position feeling helpless and hapless (perhaps like Fritzi’s wife) or move in to the Rescuer role and take care of everyone else including their perpetrator (oh, well, I guess this describes Fritzi’s wife even better). Or thirdly they can become a Self-Protector, attempting to gain a sense of power and control by being dominating and over controlling or they can hide behind a wall of hardened emotions. All of these states can, of course, be behind dissociative walls themselves. At the extreme, all of these roles become mental illness. Rescuers are the co-dependant supporters of addicts, abusers and other irrational human beings. Victims become the suicidal depressed clients in psychiatric wards. Self-Protectors (at their worst) can become monsters like Fritzi. Our prisons are full of them.

But none of the above falls into the category of psychotic necessarily. Being mentally ill does not mean insane.

Sorry, Fritzi.>

But to own our own safety we MUST protect ourselves against people who are unable for whatever the reason, to keep themselves from endangering others. When our illness becomes a danger to others, there is no choice but to be locked up. That owns our need for safety. Any jury that would find Fritzi’s illness as a reason to let him go, would have to be one that didn’t understand the need for keeping society safe from someone unable to manage to keep society safe from themselves.

Does “Mentally Ill” equal “Insane”?

What do you think? Comment below.

The Bizarre Enslavement of Elizabeth

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:37:11 GMT

The Captivity of Elizabeth

Josef Fritzl shocked and surprised most of the world with the bizarre story of his enslavement of his now 42 year old daughter and her two sons. Rocking Austria with the news, his daughter exposed the horrors she suffered to the police. For 24 years she was held captive by this man, unable to even see the light of day. Before that, she was also his captive slave as his sex slave since the age of 11. Who knows how many more of her 6 surviving children have also been his sex slaves. We know that pedophiles have no limits to the number of children they can and will use for their sexual pleasure.

One of the questions we will likely never know the answers to is who else was involved in helping him set up his mini-prison for his progeny. Certainly others had to have been involved in building out this sound proof cellar that even his wife didn’t know existed. It would have been too difficult for him to do this himself, authorities say.

Child captives

The horrors of what this man has done are shocking to most people. Raping and holding his own children captive is unthinkable for most of us. I thank God for that fact. Yet, stories like this come to me every day. Perhaps they were not held captive for 24 years, but they were certainly held captive for their entire childhoods.

This is often the reality of what survivors of childhood sexual abuse. They are in fact at the total control of their abusing parents. Their position as children gives them no rights and no way to escape, they are totally dependant on their parents for their care and have no choice but to do whatever their parents tell them to do. If they are in some type of cult, they are even more trapped because it involves all of the people in their world.

Or split off selves

The result is a type of psychic splitting that often becomes Dissociative Identity Disorder. For some its merely Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, where the splits are not clear cut and do not carry clearly separate identities, only moods or jobs and memories of what occurred that is blocked out by the host. Many of us are like this, whether we realize it or not. If you have blocks of your childhood you don’t recall it could be held by a ego-state split off from your conscious awareness.

This is what explains the bizarre and inexplicable behavior of people who seem “ordinary” to the outside world and who have alter identities that behave in sometimes horrific ways. That is not to say that all DID’s have horrific things they do or have done, mostly this is not true. But this is how this sort of thing occurs.

How the Cycle of Egocentrism starts inside

Because our psyches are set up to split off awareness of things to awful for our little minds to comprehend, we send this part of our awareness into the nether regions of our mind. This part of us has been a Victim of something awful. Then perhaps this part of us has to continue to participate in horrors and to survive, models themselves after the perpetrator of the abuse. This part of them becomes like their perpetrator in order to survive so they become a Self Protector. In order to protect themselves, they align with their perpetrator. Or they become the caretaker of their perpetrator to survive becoming a Rescuer.

It changes everything when you recognize how the splitting occurs in all of us at some level. When it occurs to the degree it did for Josef Fritzl, it creates a monster that most of us cannot fathom. Yes, even Josef Fritzl deserves empathy. What could have happened to him to make him become the horrific nightmare of a human being he became? To be really clear: this does not justify his behavior. He is still responsible for what he did, even if we can recognize that at some point he was a Victim as well.

What do you think?

Is it possible to find empathy for such a monster? Like Hitler, Josef Fritzl did horrid things. But at some level he, too, was just trying to survive in the only way he could figure out to survive based on how he saw his world. Let me know what you think. Comment below.

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A Cult is a Cult is a Cult

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:31:34 GMT

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

Bloody Chicago

Melody Brooke, MA, Conflict Coach, Motivational Speaker — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:48:30 GMT

Gangland Chicago

Chicago has suffered another horrible weekend of what are most likely gang related shootings. 36 people were shot over the course of one single weekend. I don’t know what the numbers were in the 20’s and 30’s when the mafia was running Chicago but I don’t imagine it was any worse than this.

What drives this kind of violence? The police and others want to blame the guns for the problems. I’m reminded of the movie West Side Story when I hear that. They didn’t need guns to kill people. Maybe fewer people get killed, but killing still happens. Blaming the guns doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter. When we understand the Cycle of Egocentrism we can begin to see how the horrors of this kind of violence are triggered.

Gangs and the Cycle of Egocentrism

Gangs are the epitome of the Cycle of Egocentrism at work. Someone at some point felt damaged by someone else in a different gang, heck, maybe that is what started the gang in the first place. Maybe someone’s friend was insulted, hurt, or killed by someone (thereby becoming a Victim) and the friend gathered up a bunch of their mutual friends and became a gang (then becoming a group of Self-Protectors). Now they target this other person (another Victim), who in turn gathers up his friends and they became a gang (another group of Self-Protectors). The blame game ensues and all that results is pain and death.

The Cycle and us

How many times in our lives have we become stuck in the Victim/Self-Protector cycle of blame? I know when I got divorced (both times) I was convinced the guy was horrible. I made up all kinds of good reasons that my friends agreed with about how awful they were. And, yes, their behaviors were awful. My friends and I judged them as being to blame for everything that happened in my relationship and I could see no complicity on my part. He was the one that was screwing around, after all. He was the one with the temper. He was the one behaving irresponsibly. I never saw that I owned as much responsibility for what occurred in our relationship as my husbands. I was trapped in the blame game just as surely as those gang members.

The growing divorce rate

The Cycle of Egocentrism explains the growing divorce rate better than any thing else. When we get caught up in a Cycle of Egocentrism we believe we are the Victim, and our spouse is the Self-Protector/Perpetrator. Our only choice is to look for Rescue. A Lawyer makes a good Rescuer. The lawyer starts handing out harsh complaints against our spouse and we feel much better. Of course, then we become the Self-Protector/Perpetrator don’t we? Our spouse then gets so hurt and angry, and they lash back with their own Lawyer. Breaking that cycle is the only way to really change everything.

How are you engaged in the Cycle of Egocentrism?

Have you ever found yourself stuck in blame and battling for survival? If you are or have been caught up in the drama, I’d love to hear how your story turned out. Comment below.