How Trauma Is Carried Across Generations

Holding the secret history of our ancestors.

Published on May 28, 2012 by Molly S. Castelloe, Ph.D. in The Me in We

 

What is overwhelming and unnamable is passed on to those we are closest to. Our loved ones carry what we cannot. And we do the same.
This is the subject of Lost in Transmission: Studies of Trauma Across Generations, edited by M. Gerard Fromm (2012). This collection of essays on traumatic transmission builds on the idea that “what human beings cannot contain of their experience—what has been traumatically overwhelming, unbearable, unthinkable—falls out of social discourse, but very often on to and into the next generation as an affective sensitivity or a chaotic urgency.”
The transmission of trauma may be particular to a given family suffering a loss, such as the death of an infant, or it can be a shared response to societal trauma.
Maurice De Witt, a sidewalk Santa on Fifth Avenue noticed a marked change in behavior the holiday season following 9/11 when parents would not “let the hands of their children go. The kids sense that. It’s like water seeping down, and the kids can feel it... There is an anxiety, but the kids can’t make the connections.”

“This astute man was noticing a powerful double message in the parent’s action,” Fromm says. “Consciously and verbally, the message was 'Here’s Santa. Love him.' Unconsciously and physically, it was 'Here’s Santa. Fear him.' The unnamed trauma of 9/11 was communicated to the next generation by the squeeze of a hand.”
Psychic legacies are often passed on through unconscious cues or affective messages that flow between child and adult. Sometimes anxiety falls from one generation to the next through stories told.
Psychohistorian Peter Loewenberg recalls the oral tradition of his parents who lived through the hunger years in Germany during the First World War when the physical health and stature of a generation was stunted due to prolonged malnutrition. According to their stories, a once-a-year indulgence was an orange segmented and apportioned among the entire family. Loewenberg further identifies a cause chain between physical privations of the German people during WWI, which culminated in the Great Depression (1929), and the Nazi appeal to children of Central Europe. To what extent did “the passive experiences of childhood starvation” lead to a reversal and fantasied “undoing” through the hunger regimen and cruelty of the concentration camps? (Lowenberg, 61)

The Phoenix Kimono, painting by Arthur Hunter-Blair

He cites another example of group transmission and its reversal. "The greatest Chinese historical trauma was undoubtedly the humiliation of the Japanese Imperial land” (1937-1945). When Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic in 1949 and said “The Chinese People have stood up!” he was repairing historical shame and hurt.Psychohistorian Howard Stein takes up the topic of collective trauma in America and imagines all the possible directions trauma can be transmitted in nations, ethnic groups, religions, and families. Trauma can be transferred in "vertical" direction, for example, in the brutal downsizing of a corporation. This is also the case in a leadership change at a local church after a pastor has been accused of sexual misconduct.
Stein articulates "horizontal" transmission as the circulation of injury among people in more equivalent powers relations. This is often the experience of health professionals working with victims of large scale disaster, such as the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), who suffer the empathy of witnessing second-hand. Vertical and lateral transmissions may happen concurrently, in relation to the same event.
Traumatic transmission ferries out unacknowledged grief along multiple vectors. Stein says mourning is "short-circuited," groups become "stuck" in time, and collective solidarity is created in the process.
Transmission is the giving of a task. The next generation must grapple with the trauma, find ways of representing it and spare transmitting the experience of hell back to one's parents. A main task of transmission is to resist disassociating from the family hertiage and "bring its full, tragic story into social discourse." (Fromm, xxi)
Often one child within a family is nominated to both carry and communicate the grief of their predecessors. There was a man who entered a Holocaust Museum requesting that the institution keep the remains of the tattooed serial number taken from his arm. The chosen child is analogously charged with the mission of keeping the family heritage, being a “holding environment.”
How do we carry secret stories from before our lifetimes?
Transgenerational transmissions take on life in our in dreams, in acting out, in “life lessons” given in turns of phrase and taught us by our family. Discovering transmission means coming to know and tell a larger narrative, one from the preceding generation. It requires close listening to the stories of our parents and grandparents, with special attention to the social and historical milieu in which they lived -- especially its military, economic and political turmoil.
The emotional ties between child and ancestors are essential to the development of our values. These bonds often determine the answers to myriad questions such as: “Who am I?” "Who am I to my family?” “Who can ‘we’ trust” and who are our enemies?” “What ties me to my family?” And, most importantly, “of these ties, which do I reject and which to I keep?" (Barri Belnap, 127)
How does one discharge this mission? It is a precarious terrain of finding one's way through a web of familial loyalties to which one has been intensely faithful. The working through of transmission entails a painful, seemingly unbearable, process of separation. It can become an identity crisis, the breaking of an emotional chain. As Fromm puts it, “something life defining and deeply intimate is over.” The child speaks what their parent could not. He or she recognizes how their own experience has been authored, how one has been authorized, if unconsciously, to carry their parents’ injury into the future. In rising above the remnants of one's ancestors' trauma, one helps to heal future generations.



http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-me-in-we/201205/how-trauma-is-carried-across-generations

關於自殺

立定決心求死的人，是不會透露任何訊息的。
透露訊息的人，是在求助。
一般人聽見他人說自殺，會恐慌焦慮，恐慌焦慮之下可能denial，叫對方別亂想，跟對方rationalise──有人比你更慘更痛苦，你怎麼可以放棄.......
Denial和rationalisation是防衛機制。

華人的社會文化，這套方式一直不被置疑。用理性態度處理感受。
想像，如果是你，很痛苦、迷失時，你希望得到怎麼樣的對待？
你需要的是甚麼？

是時候棄舊換新了。
學習用心。
用心生活。
聆聽自己的心，他人的心。


如果回到心，心的感受。
感受對方的焦慮、痛苦、絕望與孤獨。
用心，傾聽對方。
允許對方釋放內在的情緒。
很可能你便救了一條命。
傾聽的方量很大(powerful)。

有人跟你說自殺的話，要談。
不會因為你跟他談了等於鼓勵他去自殺。
是反過來，跟對方談，傾聽對方，可減輕或令對方打消自殺的念頭。
Gently探問對方要如何自殺。如果說得出細詳計劃的，慎重以待。他是認真的。
否則，可能只是一時的情緒。
沮喪時一個念頭「死掉算了」很多人都有過。這樣一個念頭是有安撫作用的，讓人感覺「有出路」。

給對方一個用心、用力的擁抱。
學習擁抱。
學習陪伴。
給予陪伴。


學習，允許情緒。
讓情緒被表達。

擁抱大家。
祝福大家。

當下

Pain

When inward tenderness finds the secret hurt,
pain itself will crack the rock and Ah!!!
let the SOUL emerge.

/Rumi

What Does it Mean to Let Go?

In the shift of Human Consciousness we’re often talking about ‘letting go’

But what does it mean?

How do we truly let go?

In the coaching that I do, I often find there’s a subtle inner program that makes people want to avoid challenging and difficult circumstances. It’s certainly a conditioning from society. To me, true letting go, is a continual process of confrontation of the moment and surrendering into what we really feel…

Surrender is not blind acceptance

Another term that often get’s spoken of in spiritual circles is that of ‘acceptance’ – accepting totally without reservation what appears on our landscape. I agree with this whole-heartedly, but what actually IS appearing on your consciousness landscape?

Again we have to be careful of avoidance here. Some will say “if it doesn’t feel right, then don’t do it. If it doesn’t flow, then it can’t be coming from the soul. So just let go and do something else.”

“But sometimes to be in the flow is for nothing to be flowing at all.”It could be that resistance in the field is exactly what we need to discover a new facet of beingness.

Synchronicity and the natural pull of the soul

What I mean by this is that synchronicity and the natural pull of the soul, doesn’t take us into the ‘good’ places without first confronting the ‘bad’ – that which makes us tight and close down. Because it is only through this inner confrontation that we expand, evolve and grow…

If you want to be courageous, pray for situations that require courage
If you want to be forgiving, pray for situations that cause you to forgive
If you want to be expanded and light, pray for situations that are dark and close down.
To be truly free, we must confront that which takes our freedom away,
For it is only us that truly determines how we experience life.

Profound self honesty

So it would seem that we face a paradox then. On the one hand, there’s a sense of rightness to the flow of the soul. There’s a knowing of when we’re truly aligned.
And when we’re in the flow of the ‘rightness’, then synchronicity just clicks into place, supporting our actions. But then on the other hand, the flow will take us into the places we get tight – places that don’t feel so good.

It’s all about profound self honesty. When we’re being truly honest with ourselves, we know what the soul is really inviting us to do and we know when we’re in avoidance – our actions just don’t feel right. Even (and especially) if everything feels easy.

Transcendence

It’s all about ‘transcendence’. Having the courage to confront the moment as it truly is, to accept what is appearing on our landscape, then to go deeply into the feelings that arise.

These feelings may be very dense, dark and unpleasant. Nevertheless, to truly clear the energy and evolve past it, we must go into it, feel it again and liberate that aspect of our soul which is identifying with it.

The remarkable paradox is, that when we truly do this, it is not that hard to process the energy. And with this transcendence, there usually follows amazing expansions, infusions of healing energy, and the sense of enlightenment. To me, this is what it truly means to let go.

Video: From “Good Will Hunting”. The clip shows perfectly how initially we can so easily suppress and deny what we really feel. But then if gently pushed, how we can surrender into that which limits and holds us back…

By Chris Bourne

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/03/what-does-it-mean-to-let-go/

Feeling

From my perspective as an existential psychologist, feeling is a form of intelligence. It’s the body’s direct, holistic, intuitive way of knowing and responding. It is highly attuned and intelligent. And it takes account of many factors all at once, unlike our conceptual mind, which can only process one thing at a time. Unlike emotionality, which is a reactivity that is directed outward, feeling often helps you contact deep inner truths. Unfortunately, traditional Buddhism doesn’t make a clear distinction between feeling and emotion, so they tend to be lumped together as something samsaric to overcome.

/John Welwood

How courageous is your love?

Part I

Many view love as a purely positive force. It is positive, but for love to live up to its advertising as the most powerful energy on the planet, it must be bigger than the feel-good experience we claim it to be. Love must embrace everything from euphoria to devastation, selflessness to utter selfishness, on both the personal and collective level. For love to be the all-encompassing force we intuit it to be, love must also be able to fully embrace and reconcile the darkness and suffering of the world. The transformation of pain and suffering into positivity, deep compassion, and healing service is the way that love achieves this and grows into its own heart to embrace all of life. This way, seeming opposites are united—Yin and Yang become one dynamic whole, and life flows deeply, courageously and robustly through and from us.

Because life is full of loss, grief must be part and parcel of love. Grief must allow us to love more, not less. When we conceal grief, we stymie the transformation of love from pain and suffering into pleasure, deeper beauty and genuine compassion. Reciprocally, love must allow us to grieve more. And it does, for the more we care for and love this world the more it breaks our hearts. Ultimately then, a sure measure of our integrated love is the degree to which our hearts have broken open and recapitulated that breaking by staying profoundly open. In this, paradoxically, we can find both a concrete and ineffable wholeness, beauty, appreciation, and an abiding care for the welfare and fulfillment for all of life.

When we grieve something we realize how much we love it, how much it has meant to us. This experience opens us to value other things that we love; that is, if we are not afraid of grief and its attendant heartache. In one way, religious notions of salvation can be a seen as another way to stave off feeling badly, as can the idea of romantic love—that someone else is going to make us happy and whole and disappear our problems.

I do not advocate seeking out heartache, but it is amazing the lengths to which humanity will go to stave off psychological pain, to the point of pervasively denying reality. Perhaps this is because pain is a taste of literal death, as are illness and trauma. We intuit that nothing will feel as bad as to die, literally. I go so far as to say that our fear of pain, as a taste of final death, is at the root of personal and planetary suffering. For we equate feeling badly with suffering. But, pain is not suffering. Suffering is, in fact, the refusal to risk or to deal with pain. Ironically, suffering is what happens when we see things non-poetically, one-sidedly, rather than paradoxically, more wholly, as the interdependence and inter-promoting properties of dark and light, Yin and Yang.

Yin-Yang theory is one of the few practical, non-dual gems of ancient wisdom we have to illuminates spirituality in everyday life. Yin and Yang are integral to Taoism, the pragmatic philosophy of living in harmony with nature, and to the practice of Chinese medicine. I am grateful for my training in Chinese medicine, to be been versed in this dynamic, profound and ultimately practical model of living that allows us to richly appreciate healing, spirituality, sustainability, ecology, economics, and all aspects of life. The key to Yin and Yang theory, and its stamp of validity for me is both its poetic and literal embrace of dark and light, good and bad, visible and invisible, happy and sad, positive and negative. These are the paradoxical, dialectical truisms that comprise the ever-changing, ever-diminishing and simultaneously regenerative flow of life.

The unity of Yin and Yang, as depicted in the Ying-Yang symbol, can be summed up as the fundamental interplay and unity of dark and light. Only when dark and light transform into and promote one another do we achieve true wholeness. This is the law of nature to which we are all subject. All of reality as we know it follows the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. When we can celebrate this cycle in our daily lives, we live a taste of the great fear at the end of our lives for which we invent our religious beliefs and unduly protect our attachments—to avoid facing the inevitability of death.

Daily disappointments and losses cut our attachments, exposing our fears and vulnerability, challenging our instincts for survival on all levels. Yet, if we can breathe deeply and allow our hearts to engage their transformational nature, of turning pain into positivity, then we can find more peace, freedom, and wholeness. The bonus of embracing and being transformed by our daily declines—our small deaths—is that we get to live more fully while still alive. Is it any wonder then that the French word for orgasm, petit mort, translates literally as “small death?”

Figurative death, when it is transformative, (as all declines potentially are) is ultimately an ecstasy, an orgasm of the heart. At our literal death, we do not get the opportunity to transform our lives; all we really know is that our physical bodies decay. Ironically, when we unilaterally deny and try to avoid death via our rejection of embracing the relatively smaller daily heartaches, our lives become a kind of sleepwalk. This happens when we do not have the courage to embrace the inherently transformative nature of our own hearts to allow pain to transform us into a generous and integral spirituality. When we do not embrace our petit morts, we perpetuate the horror we supposedly fear so much in the future. The antidote is to die, figuratively, today, so that we can truly come to life while we are still alive.

Emotional transformation is a radically creative effort. Transformation is the key to unite the polarities, the paradoxes as seeming contradictions, of life—dark Yin with light of Yang, as the circle of life. Staying close to paradox is to stay to the path of courageous spirituality, wholehearted love. The key to living with a heart of transformation is courage, the courage to honestly and frankly face and embrace the painful aspects of life at face value, yet to deal with this pain in an utterly creative way. After all, happiness is not the opposite of suffering. Transformation is. The great irony, the pitfall in the unilateral pursuit of pleasure, is that suffering results as the attempt to avoid feeling bad. The more we avoid inevitable or extant pain, the more deeply our suffering becomes entrenched in our hearts and the farther we arrive from freedom, deep love, and connecting with —especially giving to—the world in a meaningful way. Indeed, when we avoid the beauty of paradox we live out the horror of its irony.

When we can embrace the difficulties and pains of love and transform them into the feel-good qualities of compassion, depth, richness, gratitude, appreciation, beauty and wonder, we make love more all-encompassing, holistic in the deepest sense. This way, we allow love to be as powerful, as big, as whole, as unifying as what we bill it to be. We transform our hearts into the strongest emitters of energy on the planet, figuratively speaking anyway!

As part of humanity’s long history of denial and attempt to stave off feeling badly, we invented a heaven where everything is perfect. We believe in reincarnation so that death becomes not as terrifying as it really is. We abdicate our sensibilities to a distant, invented God, or an imagined perfect “light,” instead of discovering the inherent nature of morality and compassion in our own hearts via the embrace of darkness for light. We have invented millions of rituals to stave off anxiety. We have created fairy-tales of resurrection to justify a belief in our own immortality. We pray to make ourselves feel better, as wishful thinking to avoid facing the difficult and tragic realities we cannot control. These same challenges, ironically enough, free, deepen, and honestly spiritualize us. At some point we discover first-hand that a hellish life is what we live for having invented a hell and heaven in the first place.

When we take away the magical props of religion we are left with the cold hard facts of life. If we take away our addictions, obsessions and compulsions we are more apt to encounter more cold hard facts of life. If we dare to abandon, even temporarily, our compulsion to pursue the less benign assuagers of anxiety and disappointment, such as excess sex and culinary indulgences, we are also left with more of the same facts of life.

But the hard facts of life are really not so bad. To the sincere and grateful, to the insightful and courageous, the facts are certainly more desirable than chasing a life of superficial pleasures, religious delusion, and New Age fantasies. Why? Because life’s challenges and pains hold within their seemingly impenetrable shell, their seemingly endless spooky corridors, a graceful, deeply compassionate path to freedom, fulfillment, and ease in our own skin and in the world. When we relinquish escape into fairy-tales we are left in the seat of real possibility for transforming our lives and our spirituality, if we have the courage and creativity to appreciate and persevere through the paradoxes that integrate our spirituality in the world.

About the Author

Jack Adam Weber is a licensed acupuncturist, master herbalist, author, organic farmer, celebrated poet, and activist for Earth-centered spirituality. He integrates poetry, ancient wisdom, holistic medicine, and depth psychology into passionate presentations for personal fulfillment as a path to planetary transformation. His books, artwork, and provocative poems can be found at his website PoeticHealing.com.

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/22/the-heart-of-transformation-how-courageous-is-your-love/

428之三：關於憤怒／生氣

而關於憤怒，生活是怎麼教育我們的呢？
生氣是不好的，是沒有自我控制能力。是沒教養。

或我們自己跟自己說，生氣是不好的。
多年前談話裡我對治療師說：我從來不生氣。
治療師問我：你對生氣的理解是甚麼？
對於「生氣」，我腦裡必定浮現那一幕：那天下午爸爸不知何故（我想不起來），發了好大的脾氣，一手抓起椅子，砰！地拍在桌上。我看見椅子斷拆，桌面破裂，爸爸手掌流出血來。
整顆心被震呆。
我的宇宙在那一刻停止運行。
我的生命印記，生氣=暴力。
對於「生氣」的理解，我不曾由那個下午成長，move on.
直到治療師對我說：那是非常extreme的憤怒。生氣不限於止。
那一刻，我由「震呆」裡回過神來。咦，對！
連接回成年後的自己。看看自己，對，我常生氣！
我生氣別人以施恩態度（patronising）待我，我生氣伴侶不體諒我，我生氣別人企圖欺壓我，我生氣被人不問因原冤枉我........我氣的可多呢！
只我內心深處對「生氣」充滿恐懼。
我怕生氣。
我從來不曾面對自己的氣怒。
內心深處，我覺得生氣是不好的。是可怕的。

許多年後，我發覺，生氣有理，生氣無罪。
生氣該被表達，天經地義。
生氣不是好不是壞，生氣只是生氣。
當我生氣，我讓你知道：我很生氣！
那是應當的。

我要你聽見。
我要你知道。
我現在，很生氣。

（待續）

428之二：我內在的感受

說到428事件許多人被挑起的被背叛被遺棄的舊創，我腦裡浮現的是小時表妹被阿姨慘鞭那一幕。
那個下午表妹和村子裡小朋友玩得嘻嘻哈哈。
她媽我阿姨站家門口喊她回來。
我看著表妹一臉笑容跑到媽媽面前，阿姨二話不說藏背後的藤鞭狂風掃落葉往表妹身上抽打。
短短瞬間，表妹的笑臉轉為錯愕驚嚇然後慘嚎。嘗試逃離阿姨的狂鞭但一隻手被阿姨緊緊抓著。表妹小小的身體驚彈扭曲。
年幼的我完全被震憾。Total shock.
難以理解、困惑、恐懼。恐怖。完全不懂得反應。
很強烈地感覺好冤枉！
不公平！

428事件我通過網絡看見的，讀到的，被深深挑起自己年少見證的那一幕。
表妹做錯了甚麼？！（人民做錯了甚麼？）
被挑起當時內心的恐懼，對大人的信任，在那剎那的崩潰，內心深處延伸的不安全感。
當時延伸的一個信念：不可以完全信任大人，他們會不給理由以暴力對待我，不公平地懲罰我。他們可以不給我理由或告訴我我的罪名是甚麼。他們有那樣的權力。我不喜歡。可是我無法反抗。
很無力、無助的感覺。
同時很強的一股憤怒。
它被深深壓抑。我的憤怒。

(待續）

428之一：創傷後壓力失調？

428事件後，通過面書，看到好像很多人認為自己創傷後壓力失調（Post Traumatic Stress Disorder） 。

於是我想寫，關於PTSD，關於我對428事件出席者的心理創傷，我的體會及理解，我想將文字整理整齊。搞了好久，發覺我沒辦法整齊地寫。

於是我抄自己給朋友的回話（略經修改）：

PTSD是第一次世界大戰後，許多存活軍人回到家裡無法正常生活，出現許多失常狀況，而診斷出來的精神失調現象。（當時名字不叫PTSD)

我在網上看到有人說428事件後有人有PTSD需要輔導，講到好像所有出席者都有PTSD似地。正式被診斷PTSD的話，那狀況其實相當嚴重的。它的symptoms，主要症狀：1. Reliving the event, 一直flashback，戲裡看過吧？退伍軍人不停發夢或白日也不停重回戰場，曾經經歷的畫面不停真實重演，同時感受如在現場一樣intense。當事人日常生活會因這現象大受干擾，無法正常操作。2.Avoidance，基本上是withdrawn現象，迴避日常活動，情感麻木，隔離。3.Arousal，hypervigilant，容易驚跳，睡眠失調，容易生氣。PTSD 是anxiety disorder，戰爭，天災人禍（被搶劫被強奸被毆打被綁票突發事件意外死亡等等）事件的發生所導致的高度焦慮。

PTSD是精神病裡其中一個獨立的category.

我覺得許多出席428的人在經歷的其實是哀傷。人在哀傷中會有denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance的stages。第一個反應通常是shock.難以置信難以接受事情的發生，接下來在denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance之間跳來跳去。哀傷通常是因為失去（loss），世間所有可以失去的都是loss，情感、人、童年、純真、工作、東西、自信、信任etc.

我覺得428事件的另一面是，它挑起許多人潛意識裡被背叛，被遺棄的傷痛。大馬政府很大程度上遺棄及背叛人民。

(再續）

轉載：愛自己

愛自己，有人說知易行難，我想大家可能仍未清楚什麼是「愛自己」，孤且分享一下我所知的。

「愛自己」在中國人社會尤其需要提倡和搞清。首先「愛自己」不等於「自私」。中國父母一直教子女多考慮他人，有種我為人人、大局為重的情操，於是很多朋友都把自己的需要放到最後，往往變成首先設法遷就他人，然而心底不高興、不爽！有時遷就未必來自父母，而是尋求社會認同，所謂人在江湖。

例如下班同事慫恿你喝兩杯，其實要你歸邊。問心你工作辛苦，不想再參與小圈子拉攏。腦袋告訴你，不去可能被人揶揄裝清高，於是你去了。整晚皮笑肉不笑，回家捶心自問，覺得浪費時間。那為何不一早say no！？

另一例子是朋友三天兩頭約你吃飯，不過你有時情願獨處，處理私務也好，一個人呆坐亦享受。用心衡量，你發現享受獨處比維緊友誼重要，why not先考慮自己心裡最想要的，婉拒約會？

要過不抱怨的生活，愛自己是一種方法。吾友最愛抱怨經常參加飯局，席上言語無味，內容毫無養份，他情願看一本好書或騰出時間打掃。我請他拒絕飯局，學會說不，他說難為情，他希望人家覺得他是個好好先生，他是個沒所謂的人。我問﹕「你真是沒所謂嗎？不計較自己不開心嗎？你是滿心樂意地去吃嗎？尊重自己意願重要，抑或打造形象重要？好好先生是真的你嗎？」朋友啞了，忽然抱怨﹕「我沒你勇敢，我沒你口才好，我不懂說。」朋友這是賭氣話！

朋友有天埋怨﹕「我一會兒又要幫某某當搬運，一年了，每星期免費幫他工作，他從沒說聲謝謝。我說﹕「你不想幫就告訴他！這樣懷著怨氣不好。你希望朋友跟你道謝，為何不把想法告訴對方？」朋友竟說﹕「要求他多謝我顯得斤斤計較，不再幫他我又說不出口，不如你幫我說……」吓！

愛自己就要用心用行動，而不是假手於人！

愛自己是做自己的主人，而不是把主權交給人家！

愛自己就是為自己設定界線(setting up one’s boundary)，堅守範圍。

那天一個朋友打來邀約，我拒絕了。他說﹕「你一定是很忙碌，我知道的，你是忙碌的所以才不應約。」我誠實回答﹕「我不忙碌，我想留在家裡，下次再約。」我尊重我的心，我要求自己誠實，我不想找一些藉口或理由，這對自己和對朋友都不好，心在真實的時候輕鬆。

／Horseof11's Blog

Deflection

Deflection is a maneuver for turning aside from direct contact with another person. It's a way of taking the heat off the actual contact. The heat is taken off by circumlocution, by excessive language, by laughing off what one says, by not looking at the person one is talking to, by abstract rather than specific, by not getting the point, by coming up with bad examples or none at all, by politeness rather directness, by stereotyped language instead of original language, by substituting mild emotions for intense ones, by talking about the past when the present is more relevant, by talking about rather than talking to, and by shrugging off the importance of what one has just said.

/Erving & Miriam Polster, Gestalt Therapy Integrated

曾經和一班同事說話間，某人提起一件悲慘事件，很快地另一人說起自己更慘的另一事件，登時野火燎原，一人一嘴，開展「我更慘」競賽，最終變成一場笑局，最後勝出者為家裡每粒米切半，只幾顆半粒米一餐者。

好多人的交流，不碰及情感。風一動便轉移感受。
杉杉有禮，人云亦云，轉移話題，製造笑話。

我不是說這樣不好。Deflection有它存在的因由。
而是，有時，緩一緩，停一停，如果不做些甚麼，說些甚麼，自己心裡那當兒，感受了甚麼？
可願意給那感受，一點兒陪伴及認同？
認同自己，認同他人。

陪伴／尊重痛

朋友說，同學一提到親人患乳癌，空氣沉重之際，同學二抱歉地說：我不能不說這個。說了一個笑話，朋友在咖啡室抬手招呼侍應，被背後的舊式風扇削掉一片指肉，血流如注，很英國人（是，英國文化很有「若無其事」的一面）地「哦，流血了，沒事。」
笑話說罷講師說話，這對之前提到親人患乳癌的同學不尊重。
朋友對我說：需要這麼嚴肅嗎？生活不是需要一點幽默感嗎？

是，生活需要幽默感。
同時，在那一刻，那笑話起了一個作用：轉移大家心裡的難受。對未知、病痛、死亡的恐懼及焦慮。
與其感受同學一心裡的難受與掙扎。

我想起自己，曾經我多麼善於嘲笑自己的痛苦。苦中作樂。美其言。
現在回頭看，曾經我多麼無法陪伴自己的痛楚。
我將感受轉移。
無形中我否定它的存在。

而現在我發覺，所有的痛，都該被深深尊重。
被允許。

陪伴痛，痛便轉化，轉化為新的能量。
轉化為愛。
生命的成長。

不曉得該說甚麼的時候，便沉默吧。

我感謝所有曾經陪伴我的人。所有無言的失措及沉默。
是他們允許了我說：我很痛苦。
我當時需要的，只是被聽見，被看見。
他們看見我，我便看見了自己。

轉載：陪伴

回想一下，當我們還是小孩子的時候，遇到未知的情況時（突然被音樂嚇到、被大狗嚇到，或是有陌生人靠近），我們往往需要一位穩定且讓人安心信靠的大人在身旁，讓我們清楚知道：「別擔心，有人在我身旁，他知道我發生的困難與問題，他不會讓我一個人無助面對。」

然後，在那個大人的協助下，我們慢慢明白情境、慢慢熟悉情況，並且慢慢地學習面對、處理的方式。

但是，如果當一個小孩處在未知且陌生的環境，內心正經驗著許多不安與恐懼，需要一位安心的信靠者，也需要一個緩和情緒的調節者，但這時，身旁的大人卻表現得比他更焦慮、更緊張，更慌亂，更像天塌了一般地毀滅感時，那麼，這個孩子也將會更加地不安、更加地驚慌。這時，或許他會轉而壓抑住自己的感受，好讓身旁的人不再這麼緊張、擔憂，或者不讓他人看出自己的不安與害怕，而瞬間漠然，及轉移話題。

所以，基本上，陪伴的過程，其實是一段協助人可以漸漸從不安到安心的過程，也是一個讓人感受到自己不是一個人「孤單」面對，沒人理會、沒人理解的過程。

／同哀傷

暴力

和朋友談話，朋友說起年少曾經的經歷。
朋友的經歷讓我想起我目睹的發生在我表妹身上的事。
那一天她和小朋友們玩得興高采烈，她媽將她喊回家，一踏入門，她媽二話不說籐鞭狂風掃落葉抽打。
我當時的震撼是，表妹的笑臉瞬間轉為痛哭慘叫。
剎那間。

很多年後，很多很多年後，我依然為表妹感覺冤枉。

我看見，小孩的創傷，並不需要甚麼天災人禍。
就是這些瑣瑣碎碎的，日常。
日積月累。

突然的發生，那裡頭的暴力。

多少小孩，在無形的暴力裡成長。

Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath / Eckhart Tolle

這也是延續篇。一行禪師說的，我的感受是，如果你沒面對及處理自己的憤怒，you are part of the wrongdoing by the way you live your life.

憤怒底下，是痛。
恐懼底下，充滿憤怒；憤怒底下，充滿哀傷；哀傷底下，充滿無力感。

當你對這個世界憤怒，我心裡的難過是，我感受哀傷。
是甚麼令你那麼痛，那麼哀傷？
我給你一個擁抱。

擁抱我自己的憤怒，哀傷與痛。

此刻

你說過去生命的經歷像帶刺藤蔓一般纏繞著你，
盤據在你左腦的理智之城，
幾乎要壓垮你好不容易建築的城牆，
掠奪你還算清醒的自我。

你用了你畢生的努力，
想要讓自己看起來，美麗。

但在這一刻， 你看不見，美麗，
看見自己變形，
扭曲得不像生物。
你痛惡藤蔓弄痛了你，
使你呼吸，
困難。

我卻看見，
藤蔓是喝你大量的無聲淚水而生長，
而蔓延。
你想斬了那藤蔓，
卻怕斬斷藤蔓，
就失去了理智之城的意義。
那更為空無。

所以，你忍痛背負著這巨大沉重的藤蔓。
不忍切割。

你問我可否為你斬斷藤蔓？
我猜想，藤蔓無法停止生長，
除非不再需要喝下淚水，
與吃下羞愧。

你懊惱著，怎麼能夠停止流淚，
與羞愧，
這是你生命以來，
一直相隨的。

但是，你知道嗎？
你不是藤蔓，
你也不是理智之城，
你僅僅是你，
沒有了他們，
你才能真正的看見自己，
也才能看見你真實的模樣。

你不需要背負，
也不需要承擔，
更不需要鞭打自己。

你僅僅需要在此刻，
綻放你的美，
而不是追尋你的美。

你如實的成為你自己，
感受到你是你，
不需要再要任何的評價，
打量計算著你自己。

你只需要在此刻，
呼吸著、綻放著，
那就是美。

轉載自／同哀傷

操縱

當我開始比較覺知，我常看見自己如何操縱他人。
常吃一驚然後微微一笑。
人之為人，人是這地球最善於操縱的生物。
是這個能力讓人類存活。

如果只是覺知，看見，知道，不去審判那是好或壞。
操縱並不可怕。不是甚麼壞東西。
分別只是覺知與否。面對與否。
接受與否。

尼采說，人際關係全是權力鬥爭。它何嘗不是？

輔導工作也有它操縱的成份。
如何建立雙方的關係，如何在表達中思慮及選擇字眼，如何開始一段關係、結束一段關係，其中牽渉的技巧及知識，是操縱的道具。

轉載：同哀傷

小時候，你努力當個不會犯錯的小孩，以免觸怒了父母或老師。 長大後，你努力當個不會犯錯的成人，以免觸怒了這個世界。 小時候，一旦你有任何的出錯，狂風暴雨般的咆哮與毫不間斷的責罵朝你而來，讓你驚嚇萬分。

長大後，一旦有任何風吹草動，任何人不滿不屑的眼神，你的世界立刻狂風暴雨。 不同的是，責罵的聲音不再是從外在而來，而是你內在便有一個絕對不鬆懈的監督者，不斷的恐嚇你、責備你，怎麼那麼笨？怎麼學不會？怎麼總是出問題？怎麼老是被人有話說？ 你從心裡無法原諒自己，深信若不是自己不夠好，老是不正確，怎麼可能得不到他人的一句肯定？怎麼可能他人始終看不見你的努力？又怎麼總是有話說？總是指責你？

你有沒有發現？小時候責備你的那些人已經不在了，至少不一樣了，但是即使如此，他們的聲音在你心中沒小過，不僅沒消失，還成為你心中最強大攻擊自己的聲音，並且日日夜夜不放過自己！

你因此消失了，你找不到自己，聽不見自己的聲音，只能聽見你心中充滿責罵、攻擊、輕視的強大聲音，既冷酷也無情，並且讓人害怕與無助。
你也許無法一下子讓那聲音消失，但請你務必不要當一個看見孩子被傷害也無動於衷的人。
如果你試著再更多貼近你心中更深處的角落，看見那過去不斷歷經失落與失望的孩子，如何的不再相信這世界，如何的相信沒有人可以保護他，如何的在無助中忍受驚嚇，你怎麼能不為他感到難過？感到哀傷？
如果你真的能體會到他的傷心，你又怎能再接受強大責罵聲音在心中繼續對那角落的孩子攻擊、咆哮、狂怒與厭惡。 你要用你現在的心靈力量，告訴那強大的聲音：「安靜」！在寂靜之中，以緩慢而溫柔的步調走向那角落的孩子，告訴那孩子：「對不起，我讓你受怕了。對不起，我會愛你、接受你，肯定你的存在不需條件與理由」。 你要帶著沉靜而勇敢的心靠近他，擁抱他，輕輕的說：「我知道你很努力，也很盡力。我也知道你一個人的孤單與辛苦。我都看見了，你不需要再獨自躲在角落哭泣。我會愛你、接受你，因為你是你，不需要成為誰，才能被愛。

Compassion

Only if people discover compassion for themselves will they be able to confront those they hold accountable for polluting our seas and cutting down our forests.

"In Buddhism we speak of collective action," he says. "Sometimes something wrong is going on in the world and we think it is the other people who are doing it and we are not doing it.

"But you are part of the wrongdoing by the way you live your life. If you are able to understand that, not only you suffer but the other person suffers, that is also an insight.

"When you see the other person suffer you will not want to punish or blame but help that person to suffer less. If you are burdened with anger, fear, ignorance and you suffer too much, you cannot help another person. If you suffer less you are lighter more smiling, pleasant to be with, and in a position to help the person.

/Thich Nhat Hanh

和朋友談起父母對孩子的求好心切，考試七十多分是不夠好，考到九十九分該很了不起吧？不是，你可能得到的反應是：為甚麼不是一百分？

你知道自己內裡的critical voice嗎？那由小到大被父母、長輩不停地告訴你你不夠好的聲音。
於是你不停地鞭策自己，老覺得自己做得不夠好。應該更好。
有時候聽輔導對象因微小事件責備自己，我問：那是誰的聲音？誰說你不好／不對／不該？
有時對方會回答：是我自己的聲音。
它變成了你自己的聲音。

可不可以，你沒殺人放火，你努力生活，努力活著，你已經好得不得了呢？（你知道做人有多累！）
可不可以，你是你自己，現在的你，你是該被尊重、呵護及疼愛的呢？
可不可以，如果別人不懂得尊重你，可你自己尊重、呵護及疼愛自己呢？
對自己仁慈。寛愛。

我讀一行禪師這段文字，想到的是好多人對自己的殘忍。漠視自己諸般感受，所有的悲痛、哀傷、憤怒、失落，全被鎮壓，隔離。
被問起好不好，好多人會說：還不是這樣！
這樣是怎樣呢？
你的感受是甚麼呢？
這一刻。

如果你問候自己的心，你的心在說甚麼？