Multiple Voices

What is Conflict

Most people have a clear idea what conflict is. Most people don’t like conflict. In most cases conflict is difficult and hurtful for all parties involved.

Social theorist Axel Honneth explains the significant role conflict plays for a person’s healthy sense of identity and individualisation as follows: Individuals learn about who they are through interactions with others. Thus they derive a sense of self and identity through social processes of approval and recognition.

Any forms of disrespect, for example rudeness, insult, humiliation, the withholding of care or support, the withholding of rights that are enjoyed by other members of society, discrimination, marginalisation, the lack of appreciation or acceptance for one’s way of life, abuse, rape, or torture cause a threat to a person’s integrity and self-development and could bring the whole identity of a person to a collapse.

Achieving Co-Consciousness: Healing Narcissistic Self-Parts

In general I have a great aversion against labels – certainly against psychiatric labels that put a person into a defined box. Labels often have a stigma attached to the, for example DID, borderline, bipolar, or narcissistic. I am going to use narcissistic self parts here because if anyone wants to read up on this particular point, you can go on a google search and find plenty of information out there.

Narcissistic wounding, like other emotional wounding, often occurs early on in childhood. These wounds usually affect a person’s behaviour and personality throughout her/his life unless healing of these wounds is taking place.

Achieving Co-Consciousness: Self-Acceptance-And-Love

On the first glance people may ask “What has co-consciousness to do with loving yourself and accepting all the different parts of you?” My answer to that is “Everything!”

If there is a part of you that you dislike, are afraid of, or even feel disgust for, you will stay away from that part ‘full stop’. If co-consciousness means to know to a large extend what other parts know, feel what they feel, and be able to act as they act, staying away from a part of you will increase the walls that divide you and prevent co-consciousness, not decrease them.

How to support your friends and family who are traumatised

In the wake of drastic cuts of funding for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, my colleage Graz Amber has prepared a pamphlet for "HOW TO HELP" that might come in handy when people can't get the services they urgently need and might have come to rely on. Graz was so kind to allow this pamphlet to be published here:

Hearing of threats to the ACC Sensitive Claims service, particularly if it is your lifeline, could act as a possible trigger for retraumatisation [stressful and unhelpful re-experiencing of trauma] or secondary trauma [ coping with emotional and traumatic stuff in others takes it out on your body, mind and soul too ]. Here is what you could expect:

How To Deal With Anger

Anger is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a normal reaction to being abused, betrayed, hurt, or otherwise disrespected. The important question is how to deal with anger appropriately. It is really important to remember that:

for many (survivors of abuse) anger is associated with strong feelings of fear, anxiety, guilt, or shame because often abuse was accompanied with anger and survivors don’t want to be like their perpetrators. This is, according to my understanding, often the reason why survivors to repress or suppress anger. However, the refusal to be angry (or give your angry parts room to express anger in appropriate situations, is in many ways the source of many anger problems.

The number one rule for dealing with anger is to understand where your anger is coming from. How does the present situation trigger earlier experiences of being treated badly? Once that is understood, it is possible to accept one’s anger as legitimate and feel compassionate with one’s angry part/side. The anger my have to be expressed in some forms that are meaningful for the client. That could be through using creative media or through verbal expression of anger in the presence of the therapist. There will be other ways that clients can explore.

The second step is becoming compassionate with your self. Becoming aware of our own hurt and generating compassion for our younger self is the beginning of becoming more compassionate toward others. Only through self-compassion can you truly be compassionate towards others.

Next you will need to evaluate what kind of a person you want to be. Do you want to be the ranting and raving angry individual that goes through life bitter and twisted, or do you want to be the person who cares about others and wants to connect with caring supportive others? Once you have sorted your core values, you will be able to catch yourself when you are about to act in a way the goes against your deepest values. It is than that you can change your behaviour.

There is no easy shortcut when dealing with anger. No drugs, hypnosis, or cognitive restructuring will make your anger go away. But when you are ready to really deal with your anger and go through the steps mentioned before, you will be able to transform any destructive anger into a wonderful, much needed life-force.

How Multiples Can Show Therapists How To Deal With Anger

Not too long ago people involved in the business of therapy, counselling, self-growth, and change would universally claim that pent-up anger needs to be vented. Armed with sticks, bats, tennis-rackets, towels twisted to rock-hard batons, and telephone-directories clients were encouraged by their therapist to express their anger by bashing on chairs, tables, floors, or mattresses – with the occasional encouragement to “put some words” to it.

Although it might have been a great way of approaching anger issues in some cases, nowadays the agreed upon knowledge is that it only vents some energy but doesn’t deal with the underlying issue that caused the anger to be there in the first place.

I believe that people with Multiple Personalities can give the therapeutic community a precious gift. They can prove convincingly that anger is nothing bad, anger is her to stay, and anger has an important function in peoples’ lives.

What do I mean by that? Angry parts are always angry for a very, very good reason. Angry parts show that if past issues are not dealt with, the anger will continue smouldering and poisoning the person’s life. Angry parts are close to people’s core hurt, and often they are the protectors of younger parts. The process of embracing or integrate angry parts is a great lesson of how everyone best deals with anger!

What Is Passive Aggressive Behaviour

Conflict situations with an angry person are characterised by noticeable contact in the form of friction or even collision. The angry person’s point of view and wants are generally obvious whether they are unrealistic or not. This is very different when dealing with passive aggressive behaviours. Like pathological anger, passive aggressiveness is caused by a person’s inability to express anger healthily. 

The anger could be repressed or suppressed to such extend that the passive aggressive person is not even aware of his/her anger. When confronted with being called angry, the passive aggressive person may be convinced the other person has most certainly got the wrong end of the stick.

 Because passive aggressiveness is such an ‘underground movement’, it can easily drive others to the point of giving up. If a person has little or no insight into their feelings, needs, and causes for their behaviour, conflict resolution or negotiation of a more successful relationship style is very hard to achieve. How do you know you or a person you know is passive aggressive? Here are some pointers: 

They not following through with what they say they would, don’t meet deadlines, ‘forgetting’ important dates or arrangements, don’t take responsibility but blame others or circumstances, don’t take a stand about anything important, rarely express anger, agree with other people's wishes but don’t follow through with what they agree to, don’t like to be alone, strong need to control others, don’t trust others, are withdrawn in relationships, punish by withholding affection.

In conclusion, we can say that the passive aggressive person expresses his/her hostility in a covert way by withholding and not doing what others perceive he/she was prepared to do, while blaming the lack of his/her action on circumstances or third parties.  They seem to thrive on resisting the expectations of others. Most painful, however, is that the passive aggressive person is unable to initiate, establish, and maintain a loving, caring, intimate relationship.

What Is A Pathologically Angry Person?

How will you know whether you or a person close to you is a pathologically angry person? A sure sign is when you notice a pervasive behavioural pattern that can range from being negative, irritable, bitter, resentful, or having temper tantrums on one side to being hostile, aggressive, self-destructive, furious, or having regular rage attacks on the other end of the continuum of anger.

Many of the above signs are core symptoms to mental health disorders such as bi-polar, borderline personality, anti social, or narcissistic personality disorders. People with these diagnoses are known to react to perceiving being insulted, rejected, ignored, or not cared for enough with an explosion of anger or even violence either towards the ‘offender’ or towards themselves.

While some experts opt for a pharmaceutical treatment path in the hope to sedate the angry person that inconveniently acts out their inner rage, other experts see these so-called mental illnesses as being rooted in the unprocessed, un-understood, and un-acknowledged anger and resentment that has been suppressed or repressed since the early years of the angry person’s life.

Pathological anger that festers unacknowledged within a person can easily be expressed in very uncontrolled ways either hurting the angry person him/herself, or hurting other people around them.  Left unattended, this anger can accelerate to the point of exploding with tragic consequences.

Mother Issues: August Edition Blog Carnival

The August Edition of the Blog Carnival "Recovery From Sexual Abuse" is published. This month article have been submitted and selected that address the difficult topic of "MOTHERS" and the issues that arise.

There are the mothers that stand alongside the survivor and offer great support and help for the recovery. Other mothers are distant, not-believing, or even perpetrators themselves.

Either way, survivors struggle with mother issues and a lot of time in therapy is spent processing the pain that one's mother was not there, able, or willing to protect the child from being abused. 

Go to the homepage of the Blog Carnival RECOVERY FROM SEXUAL ABUSE for the articles.

Next month's edition will present blog posts that explore the topic of ANGER. If you come across a blog post that deals with anger, please support the blogger and the cause of raising the awareness of sexual abuse by submitting the article on my Carnival Submission Page.

Life Beyond Trauma Conference October 09

I have been asked by the conference organisers to post the information about this amazing conference on my blog. The conference takes place in October 2009 in Dallas, Texas. It sounds like a great opportunity for professionals, survivors, and Multiples alike to network, get ideas, and get help for the next 'leg' of your recovery! Here it goes: (I have copied the text from their website Life Beyond) check it out if you want to know more.

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