Trauma & Art

Edited / I will be posting a new drawing soon

Impermanence, life’s unpredictability and change and enjoying the good that  lasts……             

“Panta rei  / Everything flows” Heraclitus

“We should not complain about impermanence,
because without impermanence, nothing is possible.” Thich Nhat Hanh

“To live on this shifting ground, one first needs to stop obsessing about what has happened before and what might happen later. One needs to be more vitally conscious of what is happening now. This not to deny the reality of past and future. It is about embarking on a new relationship with the impermanence and temporality of life. Instead of hankering after the past and speculating about the future, one sees the present as the fruit of what has been and the germ of what will be.” Stephen Batchelor

“If we can be open…we find that life’s unpredictability is full of interesting and invigorating challenges. These challenges engage us in unexpected and unanticipated ways and allow for the freedom of unscripted responsiveness….” Mark Epstein

The idea for today’s post came to me after a brief conversation in a shop I visit weekly. The person there greeted me as usual and asked “How are you?” to which I joyfully responded “Fine”. To my surprise they commented on how it would be more precise to say: “I’m fine, right now, but I don’t know what might happen to me tomorrow”. I was initially taken aback, and then I inserted some humor into our casual brief chat, but afterwards I gave it some more thought and pondered on impermanence and continuity, and whether it is helpful to go about one’s daily life in constant dread of all the bad things that might be awaiting us at every corner. In reality unless we’re living in a war zone the risk of being run over by a car or something of the sort happening to us would probably be relatively low. And this comes from someone who has been hit by a car and has come out of the experiences alive and relatively unscathed. This mental process eventually led to this post.

Of course, it is true that bad things happen to people all over the world every day and that impermanence and change are an inherent part of living on this planet. Nobody really knows whether they will actually wake up the next day. There is also a lot in life that we have no control over, from wars to the destruction of the natural environment to heart attacks and a myriad of other things that happen to us through the course of our life. Also, nothing really stays exactly the same even if on the surface people and things may seem the same over maybe short periods of time. But it’s good to remember that there is also the impermanence of pain, and that many changes are also positive and highly desired. Without change and impermanence there would be no possibility, no change, no growth, no learning, no recovery.

One of the basic teachings in Buddhist philosophy is impermanence and that by recognising this we can deal with change and human suffering with more ease and grace. Of course it is difficult for humans to accept both change and death, and it requires practice.  But by practising acceptance of this fact we can better appreciate each moment of life, and maybe make the most of it to the extent that we can. It shakes us out of our habit of taking life for granted, which is only available in the present moment, and it also increases our sense of gratitude. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk, peace activist and poet write: “It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. We need to learn to appreciate the value of impermanence. If we are in good health and are aware of impermanence, we will take good care of ourselves. When we know that the person we love is impermanent, we will cherish our beloved all the more. Impermanence teaches us to respect and value every moment and all the precious things around us and inside of us. When we practice mindfulness of impermanence, we become fresher and more loving.”

Science also demonstrates that change is inherent to life. Some time ago I read a blog by an undergraduate student doing research, whose name I can’t recall, in which she  said something along the lines of it being important to approach everything even research from a perspective of impermanence because as she explained the goal was not to maintain any status quo of rigid certainty, but to do work that would aid change and transformation. Through advancements in technology and medicine and scientific observations we now know that change takes place in our bodies every minute. Consider all the activity taking place in our bodies and organs as we obliviously go about each day. Something like 330 billion cells are replaced daily, and in about 90 days 30 trillion will have replenished, which is the equivalent of a new you. Consider the millions of synapses coming into being even as they disperse every moment. In describing the brain in his book, Neurodharma, Rick Hanson writes: “Like the mind, the brain is impermanent: Each day, hundreds of new baby neurons are born in a process called neurogenesis, while other brain cells die naturally. There is ongoing rebuilding of existing connections between cells and structures within cells. New synapses form, while less used ones wither away.  New capillary tendrils— the tiny tubes that supply blood to our tissues— grow and reach into particularly active regions to bring them more fuel. Individual neurons routinely fire many times a second. And molecular processes cascade like falling dominoes over the course of a single millisecond….”

On the other hand, we do experience a sense of stability and continuity within constant visible and invisible changes that take place in our bodies, our identities, our sense of self, our circumstances, our relationships, our natural environment.  My son and his girlfriend stayed with us for a while over the summer and we looked at old photo albums. Everyone had changed, parents had aged and kids had grown older and much bigger, and grandparents had died. And yet it was also true that most people were still alive, some aspects of their personalities had not changed, and there was continuity in their identity and life story.  In one photo I saw that our front patio was full of pots of plants.  Now it is empty and some of the many potted plants I had when I moved here have died, but most of them have taken roots in the garden. They have transformed into bushes and tall trees. Places visited in the past are still there. Cities have probably grown bigger and denser and the beaches in the photos have undergone subtle changes over the years, many due to more recent environmental changes, but they are all still in place, recognizable, familiar. Even our house, which has gone through change, some inevitable deterioration and restoration over the last twenty six years, is still here, providing us with shelter and accommodating our changing needs. It is in some sense both the same house and a very different one.

In an article with the title, Enjoy the Good that Lasts [https://www.rickhanson.net/enjoy-the-good-that-lasts/], Rick Hanson writes: “Look around and see things you like that were here yesterday – and maybe here many years ago as well. For me writing, this includes a desk, a collage on the wall that I made a long time ago that continues to guide me, and trees and hills seen through a window. As you look around, recognize the relative stability of so many things. Sure, most if not all will pass away eventually – the universe is nearly 14 billion years old, so “in the long run” ………. but for all practical purposes, there is so much lasting good literally within reach of your hands and feet right now. …… Allow a natural sense of reassurance, perhaps relief, to emerge. Perhaps a calming, a relaxing, a sense of the security of those things that are stable. Notice anxious doubts if they come up, and let them change and pass away, knowing that the future will be whatever it is but meanwhile whatever good that is true is really actually true right now. …..

Consider people in your life and the good that’s lasting there….  Consider the good in your past. It will always have been good, even if it is here no longer. Your own accomplishments, personal disasters avoided, crazy good fun times with friends, the ripples of your own sincere efforts large and small – nothing at all can ever erase what actually happened. How about the durable good inside you? Talents and skills, moral values, neat quirks, so much knowledge: it’s all real. Enjoy the felt recognition of it…”

And yes, we now know through science that life might eventually after billions of years become extinct on this planet. Then even the natural laws and the nature of things will not be true anymore. In relation to this, physicist Brian Greene says that we believed that if we uncovered more of how the universe works we would be touching something that was always true. … He explores the degree to which even this is true or ultimately has any purpose in the absence of human beings, or in the absence of a life form that can contemplate a deep equation or Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance.  He says that he eventually came to grips with this level of impermanence by realizing that instead of grasping for future certainty it was wiser to focus on the here and now “as that is the only place in which value and meaning can actually have an anchor.”

And meanwhile, we can still trust in the nature of things and the natural laws we are aware of currently, in the web of life, in the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, in nature, in the present moment and in all that makes us humans, and in our instinctual clinging on to survival in order to see the sun rise yet another day, I watched a film with many women behind the scenes recently: Where the Crawdads Sing. Amongst its many themes there was this central theme of survival running through the whole story, of our own and other species’ biological drive, inner mandate, in some sense, to live against all odds even in dangerous or hostile environments. And we can still trust in love and in our wishing wellbeing to those we love, and hopefully, to all humanity, in our putting in some effort every day despite and inspite of it all. We can remind ourselves to live more in the now, not necessarily in a timeless, mystical now, but to quote Stephen Batchelor, to view / experience the now as “an unflinching encounter with the contingent world as it unravels moment to moment.”

I will end this post with another extract from Rick Hanson’s article mentioned above:

“See the durability of life itself. It’s been going on locally on our planet for at least 3.5 billion years. Things have changed and will change, and I am not trying to minimize bad changes, especially those involving human hands. Still, life will keep going in one form or another as long as the Earth keeps going (which should be at least a few more billion years, until our sun gradually expands and BECOMES a red giant, swallowing up Mercury, Venus, and us – but that’s a while from now)…….. Enjoy it all. The more we recognize impermanence, the more we can take refuge in the good that lasts.”

Also, I’d like to share a few things I’ve engaged with this last week.

Rick Hanson, PhD, talks about trust and its roots in our early years, mistrust and healing, the inevitability of change in people and circumstances, and finally, things we can deeply trust like love, life, the present moment, our own and other people’s natural goodness, the nature of things. So, the topics of the talk are to some extent related to some of the ideas in the piece I’ve written above [https://www.rickhanson.net/meditation-talk-trust-mistrust-and-deep-trust/].

Physician and auhtor Dr. Gabor Maté talks about the nature of addiction, trauma, and illness in a toxic culture, which is often at odds with true healing, the denial of children’s developmental needs in the culture, as well as the adult needs for connection, belonging, authenticity, autonomy, meaning, mastery, actualization, etc, and more, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEpD2o6MZOk

Art, ostracism in the work place, the complex and problematic process of diagnosis,  coercive control and hegemonic masculinity

“Beware of the destructive effects of subtle rejection and ostracism. To truly build a diverse culture where unique knowledge and perspectives are unearthed, we must understand the perverse incentives that push people toward seeking likability instead of competence.” Todd Kashdan

“One of the points I’m making in my latest book [The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture] is that this society places stress on families, tears communities apart, and isolates individuals. This leaves us with parenting situations where children’s attachment needs are not met. They’re left empty and hungry and seeking stuff from the outside. This book is about our individual health not being an isolated biological phenomenon. It reflects our relationships from conception onward, our community, and the entire culture.”  Gabor Mate

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”  Maya Angelou

“Ignorance is not merely a deficiency of knowledge but, in addition, it positively apprehends reality in a distinctive way. And being a distorted mode of conception, it creates a view of the world that is in opposition to, and in conflict with, the actual way the world is.” Stephen Batchelor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I’m posting a few more ink drawings and sharing ideas and links to material on topics I’ve been engaged with recently.

1. The first article [at: https://toddkashdan.substack.com/p/the-hidden-power-of-ostracism-at] is to some degree related to stereotyping that I wrote about in the previous post, and it is written by Todd Kashdan, PhD. The title of the article is: The Hidden Devastation of Ostracism at Work, and it’s about work place dynamics and the mechanics of ostracism in the work place often on the basis of underlying biases. Kashdan begins the piece reminding us of how few of us pass through childhood unscathed by incidents of exclusion. He writes: “It is easy to recall moments when we felt excluded by peers, and even easier when friends served as persecutors. While peers may have forgotten these events, I suspect you have not. Which raises the question: what is the impact of rejection within groups we affiliate with?”

He goes on to describe dynamics at work and how what might seem like meritocracy might be nothing more than a popular contest, which as he points out means that “people on the margins are rarely chosen, people with ideas outside of the mainstream are excluded from consideration. And people who look different, think different, or are wired differently are often defeated.” Kashdan suggests that this kind of ostracism works because it is often hard to detect or prove, but if the goal of a group is to maximize human potential, construct healthier cultures and produce fair decisions then allowing ostracism is “akin to intentionally handicapping group members.”

However,  Kashdan notes that removing popularity allows for diversity and access to new voices and possibilities. One way to move beyond biases, according to economists, Bruno Frey and Lasse Steiner, is to remove applicants, for instance, who lack the requisite skills and with the remaining pool, randomly choose who gets the job, reward, promotion, invitation, and so on, Randomness safeguards against, sexism, racism, ageism, affinity toward others with ideologically similar beliefs, a preference for the physically attractive and fit. It also decreases the possibility of favoring people with certain characteristics. Kashdan writes: “We also know that some personality traits are more desirable, especially high levels of extraversion (as opposed to introversion), emotional stability (as opposed to someone with mental health difficulties)…….”

2. The second article [at: https://berkeley.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a8079f1782122a9da1dec00db&id=920afed9bc&e=56fa618356] is also related to the workplace and it is titled: Four Ways to Help Your Coworkers Feel Respected, by Kristie Rogers, Beth. Schinoff and Nitya Chawla. It explores how lack of respect is driving people to quit their jobs and four ways that colleagues can help. They claim that people are quitting their jobs over disrespect because disrespect is the denial of someone else’s worth and it directly violates workplace norms of civility. Moreover,  employees have a far easier time recalling and describing instances of disrespect or injustice than respectful or just treatment. Due to our negativity bias this is true for all of our experience. We have the tendency to remember the negative more than the positive. This both helps survival and hinders recovery and growth.

They distinguish two types of respect at work—the baseline level of respect that we are all owed as valued people and members of the workforce, and the respect that we earn for meeting or exceeding work expectations. It is suggested that respect should be shown frequently and consistently and to keep in mind the following four things:

* To respect the value of what coworkers do and to feel gratitude for everyone’s contribution.

* To respect coworkers’ individual job performance and give them positive feedback when they do well.

* To respect coworkers’ autonomy and to have trust in their worth and capacity to do the work

* To respect coworkers’ struggles and emotions and create a psychologically safe environment at work

3. Moving on to another topic, I’d like to share a link to this week’s Being Well podcast at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AefzvuBGOSQ , where Forrest and Rick Hanson discuss the thorny and broad topic of diagnosis for mental issues, but many of the things touched upon here could also apply to physical illness. Recently, I heard a woman politician, actually, the Greek prime minister’s sister, talking about her cancer experience and why she went public about it in order to help eliminate stigma around illness. She mentioned how even in parliament many people keep silent about their serious health issues or struggles to avoid stigma and shame and possible career related repercussions. I think it is time that as a collective we began to compassionately accept our human condition, which involves being frail at times, grief, suffering and distress of all kinds, old age deterioration to one degree or another. By embracing our humanity and understanding our common humanity we may realize our human capacities for more empathy and compassion. Stephen Batchelor says: “To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.”

Some of the key points explored in the podcast are: the process used to give a diagnosis and the purpose of diagnosing. Rick and Forrest Hanson also discuss diagnosis through an evolutionary lens and situate it within cultural contexts. They touch upon the origins of mental health conditions, environmental and cultural effects and privilege. They also talk about differentiating between different diagnoses and the three subtypes of ADHD. Other aspects of diagnosis discussed here are: the emotional complexity of receiving a diagnosis and the need to pay attention to emotional experience as much as solving the problem, and the importance of mental health awareness, resources, and support from others. They focus on how we can all come to understand ourselves better, and be liberated by that understanding rather than burdened by it.

I think it’s worth listening to the episode because they discuss both the usefulness of pattern recognition, and also, the many problematic areas of the process of diagnosing, especially mental health issues. When I was doing a clinical programme the emphasis was heavy on de-contextualized psychopathology with very little recognition of trauma and circumstances, and  real interest in causality or critical evaluation. On the podcast it is suggested that the structure that’s used in mental health, in the DSM, is not based on a theory as to the causes of a condition or even the ‘how’. It’s basically a symptoms description, based on just the ‘what’. However, it is also suggested that the best way to improve mental health is to get families and children out of poverty, and that people’s capacity to ease and reduce their diagnoses is very situated in frameworks of privilege and financial opportunity. So, I think the points made here could expand our view of the whole process of diagnosing to serve all parties.

Points made during this talk include the probabilistic, messy and complicated nature of diagnoses and the dysphoria that arise when people are placed into boxes. As Rick Hanson says: “…. we don’t want to quickly snap them into some little box, people hate being boxed, I certainly do, as you know, probably even though I lived out of a box on wheels (camper van) for the last month, but it was liberating, it was a liberating box.” They point out that fact that diagnosis is situated in a medical context of pathology, “which is a whole can of worms, provides a portal into healthcare, and reimbursement, and money, and doctors.” They make the point that various so-called pathologies are actually adaptive in certain circumstances, particularly for survival. Seen through an evolutionary framework, for instance, “the upper 5% of the range of temperament in terms of, let’s say, hyperactivity and stimulation-seeking…. they’re (these kids are) bright, they’re creative, they’re vital in their body, they’re looking for a stim…… In a hunter-gatherer band, they would be a wonderful asset, in most of the situations humans have lived in until the last several decades around the world, their nature would be very adapted to their situation, but sitting still in a conventional first grade classroom for long periods of time is really hard for that kid. So, then you move away from a moralizing pathology into something that’s much more objective and physical that can be really freeing to the person, and then we can focus on what could be helpful to this kid.”

They refer to the influence of culture and historical era in relation to how we view experiences, and to the fact that people’s biology might be set up a little differently and then experience might have a bigger impact. They mention the problematic nature of diagnosis basically being a box score, a symptom checklist and on the problematic nature of the word “functioning”, which will be influenced by the beliefs and experiences of the person doing the evaluation. All in all, mental health diagnosis is extremely subjective.

The so-called ADHD spectrum is also discussed. Rick Hanson says: “I think that there should be no final ‘D’. I don’t think being highly distractible, stimulation-seeking, and/or impulsive is inherently a disorder, it’s highly adaptive and it’s been highly adaptive… for millions of years.” They use this diagnosis to show some of the existing problems around diagnoses like misdiagnosing and under and over diagnosing. For instance, white children are diagnosed with ADHD more often than black children and these “lower rates of diagnoses in non-white children are more than compensated for by disproportionately high rates of a diagnosis of conduct disorder” in black children. Also, men are diagnosed more often than women and this raises the question: Is this due to biological differences or could it be that boys are being over-diagnosed and girls are being under-diagnosed because they are acculturated differently?

Gabor Mate, who’s a physician, adds an additional lens through which to view conditions. He suggests that he has found that “all mental health conditions, or so-called mental diseases, and most chronic physical health conditions, are responses to unresolved pain. They are responses to life.” One well known example is Maya Angelou’s muteness for five years after the occurrence of certain very traumatic events in her childhood and how love and support allowed her to become Maya Angelou.  Dr Mate continues: “What’s the hallmark of ADD? Tuning out, absent-mindedness. It’s a coping mechanism. Contrary to medical nonsense people put forward, it is not a genetically inherited disease, but a response to early stress. The more sensitive you are, the more difficult it can be to cope with your environment. Early coping mechanisms, however, can become sources of problems later.” In relation to the link between technology and ADD he says: “We had these problems before we had technology. Technology makes it worse because it’s addictive and it interferes with human relationships. It’s a double-edged sword because it allows a lot of information to be available to people, but it also makes available lies, disinformation, fantasy, and venom.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-seekers-forum/202201/the-myth-normal-speaking-gabor-mat)

Finally, Rick Hanson makes reference to the Rorscharch inkblot test. The inkblots are like those some of us might have made at school during art classes. I’ve always thought of the Rorscharch as something to use in therapy or elsewhere to facilitate exploration of one’s inner world or current pre-occupations. It could also reflect the richness of one’s imagination and could be useful in stimulating interesting discussions or free-association;  however in terms of it been used as an assessment tool I have always thought that it could be highly subjective and  dependent on evaluators’ ideas, biases and inner worlds.  He provides an example of his own experience with the test as part of a licensing  exam he had to take, and his realisation that there are many people who have been given a Rorscharch to decide what their sentencing should be in a criminal system, or whether they should be continued to be locked up based on those kind of findings.  He concludes that “it’s really important to be very careful with the assessments that we use, and very respectful, and take a lot of stuff into account.”

Image of the Rorscharch inkblot test

4. I’ve just completed a short but very informative Future Learn introductory course on Coercive Control in relationships and family systems. It contains useful information in understanding the basics of coercive behaviours situated in a broader social environment that often values and reinforces such behaviours. Dissemination of this kind of information can both awaken and empower those on the receiving end of coercive control, and also, influence men resorting to this way of being in relationships, and society more broadly, to disrupt and heal dysfunctional ways of being.

In the course they make the useful distinction between legitimate power and coercive control in relationships. Legitimate power could be described as the capacity to influence, inspire, motivate, and invigorate and where the rewards are shared proportional to effort. Coercive power, on the other hand, is based on manipulation, threats, exploitation, and selfishness where the rewards and benefits are not shared regardless of effort. It is supported that this distinction is important because often controlling tactics go unnoticed and requests and demands can represent the social expectations of women. In other words, “coercive control is about exploiting gendered roles (Stark, 2007) with the primary aggressor using the collective, ‘normal’ roles of wives and mothers as leverage.” Researcher Evan Stark (2007) has used the term ‘liberty crime’ to describe the actions associated with coercive control and thereby to diminish a partner’s autonomy and space for action. In the UK coercive control is now recognised as a criminal act. Stark suggests that coercive control occurs in public settings and is not limited to “behind closed doors” behaviour that restricts the liberty and free choice of the victim, but because it goes on in the prevailing environment of gender inequality, this ‘management’ appears normal or justified.

Interestingly, studies on coercive control have developed models using words like “webs” or “cages” to conceptualise these experiences. Torna Pitman, who conducted a study in 2017 – drawing on interviews on 30 women – shed light on some common tactics, attitudes and beliefs of men who use coercive control. “Presenting a model (The Trap) in the familiar circular design, the respondents in this study placed at the core (or centre) their partner’s sense of entitlement, being superior and having an adversarial (combative) attitudinal style. All their controlling tactics and behaviours rotate around this core. According to Pitman (2017) it is from the sense of always being right and unquestionably correct, that the demands for compliance flow” (cited in course material)

One helpful conceptual model, Social Entrapment, for partner violence was originally developed by James Ptacek in 1999. The basic elements of the model are:

(a) the social isolation, fear, and coercion that the predominant aggressor’s coercive and controlling behaviour creates in the victim’s life

(b) the indifference of powerful institutions to the victim’s suffering

(c) the exacerbation of coercive control by the structural inequities associated with gender, class, race, and disability (Tolmie, et al 2018).

Another conceptual model is: Hegemonic Masculinity.  Hegemonic masculinity refers to the ideals and practices that denote the most prized ways of being a man in any given context. When engaging men using these tactics, some questions that might be helpful for professionals to gauge how controlling they may be are:

“How important is fairness to you?”     /    “How has winning become so important to you in your relationship?”

And yet another model is the Duluth model presented in the graph below. I’ve referred to this in an older post.

In addition, research suggests that on the shaping of attitudes and behaviours of men who use violence “solely focusing on individual factors in men’s lives (e.g., attitudes, beliefs and investment in gendered roles) does not properly account for all the ‘structural systemic, organisational, community, interpersonal and individual levels of society’ (Our Watch 2019) that privileges men. The term hegemonic masculinity coined by Raewyn Connell (2005) in her studies of masculinity, mentioned above, is used to describe the expectations and constraints that shape men to act or perform to meet these standards, which include: emotional control; primacy of work / career and success; control over women; aggression; stoic individualism; toughness; distain for homosexuality; competitiveness.

All these markers of masculinity are unreasonable and restrictive and they suit only very few males; however, they “are often reflected and reinforced socially, structurally, and institutionally as the expected construct of maleness. Most men fall short on scales of measurement and comparisons and must negotiate the shame of not meeting these impossible expectations, particularly if the failure is public and known/seen by their valued group….” (Our Watch, 2019).Men differ in how invested they are in belonging to and taking advantage of, the dominant masculine model and the degree which they are willing to forgo benefits such as intimacy, closeness, nurturing, connection, and emotional capacity, for example, which are all fall outside the Man ‘box’ of acceptable masculine emotions. In many contexts to be outside the man box might be a dangerous place emotionally, psychologically even physically, as the dominant (alpha) males and culture reinforce the expectations of the group. Researcher Brene Brown (2017) who emphasizes the strong relationship between shame and violence, suggests that there’s a message that runs through many men’s lives of ‘do not be perceived as weak’,

As I end this part and post today, I’d like to add that, as emphasized in the course, understanding the origins of coercive behaviour and aggression does not excuse the behaviours. Many men have been subjected to the same constraining or limiting beliefs about masculinity and have found ways to negotiate hegemonic masculinity, to heal, confront their traumas, take responsibility and to let go of the privileges that hegemonic masculinity provides. Talking about these issues and disseminating information can awaken us collectively to better ways of relating, and also, exert pressure for structural changes to take place.