Heroes in Business - Violence, Loss and PowerPattern, A Scenario

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

Reflections on a scenario in traditional patriarchal culture. Violence, loss and power patterns and collective trauma. Being empowered

Hi, this is Dr. Andrew Han, and this is episode 26 of our podcast, Guided Self-Healing, Fearless Living, and today is August 31st. And what I want to talk about today is a listener who wrote about a scenario and wanted me to talk about it in terms of pattern because this listener was very interested in our earlier conversations about pattern and wanted to know how I could understand the scenario she gave me in terms of pattern. And so let me tell you the scenario that she described briefly. And what she described was a woman who came from a very traditional culture.

And in her traditional culture, she was very intelligent, and she wanted to get educated and go off on her own and be single. And her family wanted her to get married and to not get so much education and to go forward in a more traditional way as a traditional wife in that culture and she basically stood up to that was what was described and as a result she got shunned and ostracized and really first in a way that felt very violent to this woman and then got essentially ignored and not treated sort of like as an outsider when she had been very much of an insider in the family. And also the listener said, you know, I also want to speak to the fact that it was a very patriarchal, traditional society that this was happening in.

And so this person wanted me to speak about how I would understand this in terms of the patterns in life-centered therapy. So I will, because we haven't talked about pattern in a while, I'll be happy to respond to that inquiry and tell you what I hear. And, you know, what I hear is three different kinds of patterns. Of course, it's very hard to tell without, you know, doing my diagnostic. But if I'm just thinking about it for teaching purposes and for, you know, the poignancy and empathy of the situation, what I hear is violence and loss and power patterns. So let's speak about that for a little bit. What is a violence trauma? A violence trauma basically is a trauma in which you feel,

you know, you're going along and you're feeling very solid and secure and something happens and suddenly you feel very vulnerable. And if the violence is of a certain kind, you also normally feel vulnerable inside with all of it goes with that. But you can also feel very dirty, like, you know, you've been violated in some kind of way and taken in something that really is awful. And of course, when, you know, the people who are supposed to support you, You know, the people who are supposed to support you not only don't support you, but they attack you rather viciously, as the way this was described. Of course, you will feel, unless you are so solid in yourself, you will feel a sense of violation. You will feel a sense of profound vulnerability under that kind of attack if you can't handle it and you will literally it's like taking in taking in something that feels like poison and you know it almost feels like

an energetic kind of rape um to be blunt about it you know that there's been this kind of violation and that you're under this kind of attack and feeling like people have power over you and are kind of pinning you down is the way this was described and attacking kind of mercilessly. So I hear a lot of violence there and violence, you know, trauma can be very difficult because when you have some kind of violence trauma,

a lot of things happen, one of which is you feel a sense of impotence, you feel a sense of vulnerability, you feel a sense of violation. In this case, this person felt a fair amount of guilt, like, you know, if she'd only been able to approach it differently, maybe she could have done something when then she felt helpless in the face of this attack. All of these things come with violence and a sense of, you know, rage, but impotent rage and terror, you know, about the attack and a deep sense of despair. And all of those, of course, go with violence. And then not only did she have the sense of vulnerability, which we're talking about, and the sense of like, having something that felt really dirty inside. But she also

experienced profound loss because they shunned her and they ostracized her. And of course, there's a deep sense with a lost trauma of a sense of a deep sense of emptiness inside. And you feel very empty. And it's because something that you felt like you could count on that was supporting you, it gets ripped away from you. And it's almost biological. You know, it's like, it's like something that was nourishing you and nurturing you gets ripped away from you. It's almost biological. It's like something that was nourishing you and nurturing you gets pulled away and what's left is a kind of deep hole of emptiness and the despair that comes with that kind of emptiness. So we have violence in terms of the attack. We have the sense of emptiness in terms of, you know, losing the

support of the people who were theoretically supposed to love her could come out as neglect. But in this case, it was really like just being totally abandoned, which is in some ways in the situation even worse. And then of course, there are power patterns and power patterns are that you can't, it's like what happens when you try to speak up to authority in a patriarchal culture, and you get, in some ways, annihilated they're from other lifetimes, of course, when you try to stand up or you speak your truth and someone feels threatened by your truth and you don't have any resources to fight that whole culture and what gets represented by your family or your parents because both of

them buy into the patriarchal ideas so there's a sense of like you know if i act or speak on my truth i will get ostracized i will get killed if it's another lifetime i will get silenced i will get shunned i will get all of these things, which is what comes with trauma around power. And there's not a lot, of course, you can do about that. There's some things you can do if you're in our culture, if you understand hierarchically where the true power lies. But that, of course, takes a lot of courage and a lot of being able to think on your feet. And that's pretty rare. I do know someone who as a teenage girl had a male teacher who basically told her that he really liked watching her walk. And she realized in that moment that other people had seen it. And she realized that in that sense, right then and there,

the power had shifted, even though he was the teacher, because she believed that there would be enough support for her hierarchically, that if she called him on it. He couldn't do anything about it. And she did, basically, in no uncertain terms. She told him what he could do and basically said, if you ever say anything like that to me again, you're going to be in big trouble. And she found out later that she was not the only student who this had happened to, but apparently perhaps one of the only ones who ever stood up to him. And it's because she was able to think on her feet, so to speak, and say, you know, I now know that even though he in one level has power over me, I have a certain kind of power over him. And so I can take that into account. account or you know if you're another person who was a little older who um was in her workplace sent into a factory where there had never been any women and she was uh the first woman who ever went into that factory and she was the, there was a man who ran the factory and then four people were sent in to try to make the factory work better.

And she was a woman and then there were like a thousand men in the factory. And so she goes into his office and says, sees that there are all of these naked women on the walls. And basically she says, you're going to have to take those down because, you know, these men won't respect me if this is what's going on here. So those have to come down. And he said, basically, you know, to her, he says, you're going to make me. And she's, you know, this is a young woman. She's in her early 20s. And he's like, you know, in his late 40s, she basically says to him, you know, you have a choice. You can either take them down or we can go to HR. And that did not sit well with him, but she really believed that she had the support. So if you have the support and hierarchy, you can then say, you know, I think I will win.

And I have an understanding of the power dynamics. And in this culture, of course, then you can say, I'm going to try to work from the idea that someone will support me. If no one will support you, you've got obviously a much bigger problem. And then you have to make your own assessments about what's going to happen there. So she felt in this case that she would get support.

And he, in fact, did take down all of those pictures and was not happy with her, but did come to have some grudging respect for her. And so, of course, that leads to this interesting question of why is it that very powerful women in these kinds of circumstances often don't feel like they're able to speak up for themselves. And of course, they believe that these powerful men really do have power and that no one will support them. And so you have, you know, situations where there's horrific abuse and we have, you know, we're seeing that over and over and over again. Now it's an epidemic. over and over and over again now, it's an epidemic. Women in hierarchical situations where men basically say things like,

you know, take off your blouse or whatever, and they end up doing it. And we say, well, why did they do that? And it's because, of course, they feel like, even if they have a lot of power on their own, that they feel like no one will stand with them. So they have to do this. lot of power on their own that they feel like no one will stand with them so they have to do this and it leads to such suffering until at some point or other you say in that situation whatever you are is that uh peripheral group whether it's a woman or you know because if we gender or race or class or religion or whatever it is at some point you say like you know if we can band together enough maybe we can do something

and that is in fact what happens sometimes you either speak up or what often happens in power patterns is that if you have nothing else you can do you go on strike and you see that a lot you know you can do you go on strike and you see that a lot you know um see anorexic girls and you say well anorexic girls are called sick or something but why are they doing this and you realize at some point or other that's where their power lies you know because they say like you can't control me you're going to look at me a certain way i'll stop eating and of course if they were you know gant and nandi and say i'm going on a hunger strike they would be called heroes but of course they're just called sick or they're called crazy or they're called whatever and that's what happens when people are violated and threatened with loss and power situations is that they often do things that you know the center will call the periphery,

they'll say, like, how inappropriate is that you're acting this way? And really, of course, it's not inappropriate that they're acting that way. It's the only way that makes sense when you put together violence, and loss, and power, and trauma around all three. So, you know, how do we handle these situations is if you could really sit with this inner sense of vulnerability if you've been traumatized and this inner sense of violation and dirtiness and the emptiness that goes with this and the sense of impotent rage and if you can sit with all that then perhaps you can regain your power and you can hold yourself and you can say I can stand up to power and like you can't do

anything to me even if you literally violate me you can do something to and like, you can't do anything to me. Even if you literally violate me, you can do something to my body, but you can't do something to me. And that really is the end. You know, when you can get to that place, then you really do get to keep your power and no one can do anything to you. But that of course is a very, very, very long and difficult journey when you're in such a one down place in so many different ways. So, you know, I appreciate the reflections of my listener. And these are the thoughts that I have in response to what you say.

But on some level, of course, I'm not in the best place to assess this because, of course, I'm a white male in this culture. And, you know, the best I can do is to say, hopefully I can, you know, set a different kind of container and learn from those of you who know it much more from the inside out. And you have my great appreciation because you are my teachers. So that's the hope here, is to gain a greater sense of freedom so that That's the hope here is to gain a greater sense of freedom so that you don't lose your own sense of feeling empowered no matter what anybody does to you, whether it's to violate you or to shun you or to have power over you.

You know, these things, there's certain things you can't do anything about, but that doesn't mean that it's your fault, which often happens in these situations. You need to know, especially if this has gone on forever. It's like, you know, part of the resolution is to say, of course, it wasn't your fault. And of course, you had every reason to be outraged. And of course, you wanted to lash out and you wanted to really feel empowered again. And sometimes, of course, that every reason to be outraged and of course you wanted to lash out and you wanted to really feel empowered again and sometimes of course that's the only way out is to say that I'm going to take back my power whatever it takes so that I have it internally and in your inner

world do it differently until the outer world you can say I can make assessments but I don't have to buy into your reality just because you're more powerful than me. And you can shun me, you can violate me. Or maybe you can do those things. But that doesn't mean you can own me. And that takes a lot of courage. that's the best I can say in terms of the scenario and in terms of the patterns that may be there that we can work on individually but of course it's far more than individual work it is collective trauma and we all have to do something to heal that because

you know we have our individual problems but we also have our collective problems and we are in relationship with both of them and we have to be able to work on both levels and that is really from my point of view while we're here it's to be in service to something which has to become really whole both individually collectively, so we can live lives of greater grace and truth. So having said that, my dear friends, I thank you for listening. And please keep writing, and we'll just continue having this conversation together, which I deeply appreciate, and I appreciate, you know, you reaching back out.

So until we meet again, I wish you all well, and I wish you the capacity to sit with yourselves so that you can say, you know, maybe somebody can do something to me, but that doesn't mean I have to live out what was done to me, that I can take back my sense of really being able to be holding and witnessing myself and not losing myself, because that is the greatest loss of all. So until our next time, I wish you well. Thank you again. And any reflections or comments, again, I'm deeply appreciative.

So if you want to reach me or you want to learn about us, lifecenteredtherapy.com or ahon at lifecenteredtherapy.com. And until we meet again, be well and good night.