Like every psychotherapist, I have seen many people who were abused physically or sexually (or both) as children. The consequences of abuse vary widely. Some people seem to be able to get past it, to refuse to allow their abuse to define who they are. Others stay defined by their abuse much of their lives, cherishing their anger in the hope that the Universe (or their parents) will change eventually.
A patient of mine many years ago, now dead, had been grievously physically and sexually abused by her father with her mother's passive consent. She had been hospitalized six times before the age of 14 with injuries and broken bones, inflicted by her father. The hospital notes reflected the awareness of various medical personnel of the likelihood of abuse, but this occurred before laws were passed that made reports of such abuse mandatory, and the staff members were afraid of lawsuits. So they abandoned "Betty" to her parents. The sexual abuse was equally dramatic, occurring from age 6 to 16, when after yet another failed suicide attempt she left home.
Her rage was extreme, and by any standards "justified". At one point she disfigured herself, feeling that she should look on the outside as she felt on the inside. After several years of therapy, she had improved somewhat, but the Victim rage she felt prevented her from moving on. Once, when I urged her to consider giving up her rage, she said something like "If I were to be able to recover from what happened to me, I can hear people (and my father) saying, 'See, it wasn't all that bad, she's done OK'. And I can't bear the thought that my suffering would be treated as a casual injury". In effect (as I told her) she had decided to live as a perpetual monument to the evils of child abuse, a living reproach to her parents.
I understood her feeling, but I felt that she had spent enough time as a monument and that perhaps someone else could do it. I also suggested she take more assertive action to help abused children, but she wasn't willing to consider this option.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Anger as magic
Anger is really a simple emotion, so simple and primitive that our words express it less clearly than our behavior. It expresses a simple demand: The person or situation that frustrates us must change. It accompanies a simple belief: Our anger alone somehow has the power to force change in others.
The origin of our belief in the magical power of anger stems from our earliest experiences as infants. We are hungry, cold, wet, and we want our discomfort to change. But we are powerless to end our discomfort ourselves. We scream our discontent, and lo and behold! Someone makes things better! We learn that our rage, our scream of discomfort has the power to force the Universe to change and to satisfy us. Even when we are old enough to realize that this is faulty reasoning, on some levels we continue to act as if it were true.
We anger AT someone to force them to change, to treat us differently. Anger at someone signals we still believe they have the power to make things better, and under that belief a tiny amount is the belief that our anger alone will force the change. We stop being angry with someone when we no longer have any hope or interest in change. Anger signals the unfinished nature of the relationship to which it is attached.
Even when someone we love dies, we frequently find ourselves with moments of anger at them for dying and abandoning us. The irrational nature of the anger is obvious; we don't really believe they can stop being dead and come back to us. However, a small and primitive part of us does believe.
Experiencing anger is a form of hope. We fear hopelessness and hopeless loss. We are afraid of abandonment, being hurt or injured. Anger gives us the energy to be aggressive and to overcome our fearful passivity, so it is quite useful in its way. However, it can help us stay locked in relationships that are no longer valid or even in existence any more, and thus it makes it easier to stay locked in the past.
The origin of our belief in the magical power of anger stems from our earliest experiences as infants. We are hungry, cold, wet, and we want our discomfort to change. But we are powerless to end our discomfort ourselves. We scream our discontent, and lo and behold! Someone makes things better! We learn that our rage, our scream of discomfort has the power to force the Universe to change and to satisfy us. Even when we are old enough to realize that this is faulty reasoning, on some levels we continue to act as if it were true.
We anger AT someone to force them to change, to treat us differently. Anger at someone signals we still believe they have the power to make things better, and under that belief a tiny amount is the belief that our anger alone will force the change. We stop being angry with someone when we no longer have any hope or interest in change. Anger signals the unfinished nature of the relationship to which it is attached.
Even when someone we love dies, we frequently find ourselves with moments of anger at them for dying and abandoning us. The irrational nature of the anger is obvious; we don't really believe they can stop being dead and come back to us. However, a small and primitive part of us does believe.
Experiencing anger is a form of hope. We fear hopelessness and hopeless loss. We are afraid of abandonment, being hurt or injured. Anger gives us the energy to be aggressive and to overcome our fearful passivity, so it is quite useful in its way. However, it can help us stay locked in relationships that are no longer valid or even in existence any more, and thus it makes it easier to stay locked in the past.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Values and how we change them
Everybody talks about values. Politicians talk about "family values", ministers about "religious values". Most of us have a general idea that our "values" represent our preferred choices, or the choices preferred by our culture or religion. When a choice arises we expect to act according to the relevant value.
We know that there are times when we make the "wrong" choice, in the sense that we act not according to our professed value, but according to some other priority or need. The man who steals money from his employer may know that he is "doing wrong" in spite of his professed belief that "theft is always wrong". His behavioral value is not consistent with his professed verbal values. In his mind, however, he may feel that he "has a right" to steal from the employer because he feels "exploited". So we can see that our values can exist in the form of behavioral choices as well as in our thoughts and words, and that the three may not be the same.
Values can exist in three forms: cognitive, verbal and behavioral. We can think of making a particular kind of choice (cognitive value); we can tell one another what our values are or should be (verbal values); our actual choices reveal behavioral values.
Many times we are surprised by the actual choices that we make when the time comes. They may not have been the choices we thought we would make. They may not have been the choices we told others we would make. Our values on the same topic often conflict with one another. We notice another form of values conflict when we discover that one belief (or cognitive value) clashes with another value. For instance, a Christian might believe in love and respect for others, and then is placed in a situation where he/she has to make a choice about hurting others (such as in battle). Someone enjoying a steak dinner might suddenly recall how cows are treated and find it difficult to finish the meal.
It's interesting that we can live with conflicting values for years without even noticing that they conflict until something causes us to pay attention. Then we recognize that we have to decide which value has priority. Growing up seems to me largely to be a process of examining and re-examing our values and rearranging their priorites so that they are more consistent.
When we assign a new priority to a value, we do so on the cognitive level. We decide mentally that in the future we will behave differently when the opportunity arises. Many times we actually do what we have planned. We can tell a friend what our new values are. So it seems clear that cognitive value changes can change behavioral and verbal values.
During the Korean war and after a number of studies demonstrated that when behavioral changes are forced, even at gunpoint, the cognitive values shifted gradually in the same direction. Men forced to make speeches favoring communism at gunpoint were found later to have shifted their beliefs (cognitive values) in the direction of the speeches they had been forced to make. When buying a car after much internal (and external) debate about the virtues of one model over another, once the behavioral choice to buy a particular car is made our values immediately change. Suddenly we see all the good reasons for buying this car and the negative ones become unimportant. We tell our friends what a good idea it was. We think we have made an excellent choice. Festinger called this resolution of cognitive conflict "cognitive dissonance", and this theory has long demonstrated that behavioral values and choices modify verbal and cognitive ones.
How we behave can change our values. We can't lie without lowering our value of honesty. We can't steal without changing in the direction of believing that theft is "not so bad". Not only do our values determine our choices, but our choices determine our values. We change to fit the choices that we actually make. When we choose work over family time or intimacy, we begin shifting to actually value work more than family time or intimacy. When we choose to spend time in an online relationship instead of with a friend or intimate companion, we change all our values in the corresponding direction.
Every choice changes our values. Even purely cognitive choices change the other value systems. Every choice counts. Every behavior reinforces the value associated with it. Every action or inaction has psychological consequences. What we do becomes who we are.
We know that there are times when we make the "wrong" choice, in the sense that we act not according to our professed value, but according to some other priority or need. The man who steals money from his employer may know that he is "doing wrong" in spite of his professed belief that "theft is always wrong". His behavioral value is not consistent with his professed verbal values. In his mind, however, he may feel that he "has a right" to steal from the employer because he feels "exploited". So we can see that our values can exist in the form of behavioral choices as well as in our thoughts and words, and that the three may not be the same.
Values can exist in three forms: cognitive, verbal and behavioral. We can think of making a particular kind of choice (cognitive value); we can tell one another what our values are or should be (verbal values); our actual choices reveal behavioral values.
Many times we are surprised by the actual choices that we make when the time comes. They may not have been the choices we thought we would make. They may not have been the choices we told others we would make. Our values on the same topic often conflict with one another. We notice another form of values conflict when we discover that one belief (or cognitive value) clashes with another value. For instance, a Christian might believe in love and respect for others, and then is placed in a situation where he/she has to make a choice about hurting others (such as in battle). Someone enjoying a steak dinner might suddenly recall how cows are treated and find it difficult to finish the meal.
It's interesting that we can live with conflicting values for years without even noticing that they conflict until something causes us to pay attention. Then we recognize that we have to decide which value has priority. Growing up seems to me largely to be a process of examining and re-examing our values and rearranging their priorites so that they are more consistent.
When we assign a new priority to a value, we do so on the cognitive level. We decide mentally that in the future we will behave differently when the opportunity arises. Many times we actually do what we have planned. We can tell a friend what our new values are. So it seems clear that cognitive value changes can change behavioral and verbal values.
During the Korean war and after a number of studies demonstrated that when behavioral changes are forced, even at gunpoint, the cognitive values shifted gradually in the same direction. Men forced to make speeches favoring communism at gunpoint were found later to have shifted their beliefs (cognitive values) in the direction of the speeches they had been forced to make. When buying a car after much internal (and external) debate about the virtues of one model over another, once the behavioral choice to buy a particular car is made our values immediately change. Suddenly we see all the good reasons for buying this car and the negative ones become unimportant. We tell our friends what a good idea it was. We think we have made an excellent choice. Festinger called this resolution of cognitive conflict "cognitive dissonance", and this theory has long demonstrated that behavioral values and choices modify verbal and cognitive ones.
How we behave can change our values. We can't lie without lowering our value of honesty. We can't steal without changing in the direction of believing that theft is "not so bad". Not only do our values determine our choices, but our choices determine our values. We change to fit the choices that we actually make. When we choose work over family time or intimacy, we begin shifting to actually value work more than family time or intimacy. When we choose to spend time in an online relationship instead of with a friend or intimate companion, we change all our values in the corresponding direction.
Every choice changes our values. Even purely cognitive choices change the other value systems. Every choice counts. Every behavior reinforces the value associated with it. Every action or inaction has psychological consequences. What we do becomes who we are.
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