PRESENTATION ON "WHO ARE WE"

"WHO ARE WE?"

If we begin to consider this issue we can look for the answer in various places. Use self referencing; eg looking in the mirror; then, thinking of our family and friends see us, and the differences we see there. We can quickly come to recognise how different our relationships are with one close friend or another, with different family members, and with different colleagues. We see a different relationship with each person, and to some extent with each group too.

So, our world differs to some extent all the time, especially if we take our and others mood changes too. So who are we then? Are we our gender? Are we made to be who we are by our size? By our colour? Our beliefs? Our family? Siblings, parents? Our form or build? Actually, all those and many more..

In order to progress this search for the right way to be for each of us, we could think about the issue of forming as "finding what is the appropriate form for us in our lives" How should we be, Stronger? Opinionated? More understanding and tolerant? More helpful for others or perhaps more self-centred?

Let's look at sentient animal behaviour to give us a place to begin. The lost and abandoned young rabbit will drink milk from a pipette held by its huge yet generous saviour, but on release, she and her brothers and sisters will race away to freedom, i.e. into nothingness, holding the price of their freedom above the generous feeding and "home comforts".

This is of course providing they have kept in touch with and remember the world outside. If kept away from the outside world for too long, they become "domesticated" and become dependent and torpid. In her natural form, she is speed and flight.

Then look at the caged monkey in a laboratory, being pulled from the meagre safety of his wire cage, fighting tooth and nail not to be taken out to be tested, holding on with all his might. He takes a form of fight, but one of struggling and not biting. He fears the consequences of fighting more than his fear of the experiment.

Looking into humankind, a survey in 1946 decided there were 12 "Body Disproportions" e.g. "Heads large for size of chest". "Chest small for stature" and the consequences of these "problems" were seen to be: "Individuals possessing these disproportions have a greater frequency of those dominant personality traits indicating lesser stability, lesser integration, greater sensitivity and complexity of the personality".

I like to think that we are now more accepting of one another in our size, shape, coloure etc. and also that we have grown to accept one another more generally. Most of us have become more integrated over the years and accept others more easily, though I was shocked to discover recently that a family had been hounded out of their housing because they have red hair! So there is still some way to go!

Derision and bullying have not gone away, but we do seem to have learned how to live in a more integrative way with others to a certain extent. As our knowledge and understanding of our world grows. We have become generally as a tribe more tolerant, though there is a very long journey still ahead.

So now we see the way that experiences, gender stature, colour etc. drive and shape our form, but that is of course only partly how we are and who we are. We know constitutionally and from our environment who we are, but that sense is a moveable feast. Our understanding of who we are comes in part as a mixture of what we experience from other and what we personally desire and feel.

We are appropriately different in different environments and relationships according to who the people around us are and how we feel about them at that time. We experience myriad experiences of contact, with co-workers, buddies, lovers, and our children, all of whom we respond to in our own different ways at different times, so almost always a friend or lover will know us from afar, and usually, feel joy when they see us!

REX BRADLEY

JUNE 2007

PRESENTATION ON COARSENESS

Coarseness of speech and behaviour, especially in the family home......

When we live in a coarse environment, we tend to become strongly coarsened by that environment. Once coarsened we coarsen those around us, and a cynical short tempered family environment can be formed, where physical or verbal violence is allowed, tolerated, and delivered.

Growing up in, or running, an angry and or critical family, with sarcasm, scepticism and undermining behaviour; with short tempers and short-tempered behaviour, leads to fear, blustering and posturing.

The family regime fails the children and the weaker adults by not sharing knowledge or skills, there is a fundamental withholding, which diminishes all concerned.

Pecking orders are established; along with laughter at others mistakes or lack of knowledge. "Teasing" or actually cheating or stealing from other family members obviously maintains fear and anger, which becomes generic in the family's day to day behaviour.

Working with clients who have a history of coarseness, and or physical or emotional violence in their family; can be difficult or even impossible to work with.

This is often the result of the hopelessness they have learned. They have learned that there is nothing they can do about their condition, and that they are stuck with it. They have been told that they are, or have experienced themselves as, unable to maintain themselves in their family of origin or the Children's home or the world at large.

Our work together with survivors of such a family is to open to them the possibility, that, though the experience seems set in stone, it can be moved and changed.

This can mean something of a lifeboat journey, "taking away" from the impoverished family those that can and do choose to leave it, leaving behind those who feel they cannot or will not shift.

What is missing in a Family that can have such a chronic effect on family members?

Security: So that from infancy there is a growing confidence and gently diminishing need for help and support from the caring adults. If this is done well enough we thrive as adult individuals, gaining and then giving to others, inside or outside the family.

Respect: For others and for their needs, respect for ourselves and care for our needs including direction, encouragement, teaching and training. Also acknowledging the need for mutuality, a two way street.

Encouragement: Attempting to understand others and their point of view, explaining what you know, what you really want and what you really need.

Graciousness: Making contracts for beneficial behaviours in the family and keeping them, supporting, trying and attempting.

Keeping your word, or honestly apologising for not managing to do what you said you would do.

Not keeping nasty secrets.

Care should be taken not to frighten and therefore coarsen family members through early exposure to violent movies etc., as they can lead to coarsening of the individual through violent fantasies that may grow into desires.

The remedy for the coarseness above is to work on minimising it.

By way of example, I am working with a woman client who was having a problem with her two girls being physically violent with one another; this went along with other unruly behaviour.

From time to time she was also surprised to recognise violence of speech and action in the girls that she remembers as similar to her own family of origin. When she brought the issue up with her partner, they had a row about whose family of origin was to blame for the coarseness!

When they began the discussion again a little later, they began to recognise that both families of origin had been fairly unruly, and sometimes violent, especially verbally. Each family could be described as "Coarse".

For example, in each family there was corporal punishment on a regular basis, sometimes "official", but often in the form of a parent lashing out physically and/or verbally. The client's partner came up with a telling reminder from his childhood. When he was attacked by his larger but younger brother, he went to his father and complained about being hit and his father told him to "fight back or be run over". The two brothers still do not get along too well together; the younger brother now has a criminal record, mercifully short, and is now apparently contained!

The couple have struggled hard to change their family, and primarily to change the nature of their own relationship. My client and I looked at issues as they came to the surface, and she and her partner worked hard at changing their way of being together in their relationship and their relationship with the girls.

We worked on mutual respect for all four of their relationships, and put a ban on cynicism, sarcasm and laughing at other family members misfortunes or troubles. Part of the work was that the changes to be made were discussed between all the family members. The foundations are in place; and the family continues to develop mutual respect, with the pleasure of giving and receiving, and the pleasure of creating good things for the family and themselves.

This is a positive family that recognised that they wanted to change. The mother was the initial driver and there was enough desire for change in the family members to make change happen and for the changes to be permanent. In working together in this way they have changed their life.

REX BRADLEY

January 2007

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