I work professionally as a therapist specializing in social interaction of all sorts; couple, familial, individuals and the agencies and service providers meant to support them. Within the homes of the families I have come to know and the agencies, organizations and judicial establishments I have paid witness to, the quiet desperation of men and women who have become so traumatized from their own past they end up carrying unconscious triggers into their homes, businesses and crucial interactions while seemingly becoming unable to resonate with the good they once believed possible. Traumatic social interactions set the stage for our reactions to each other. It is the establishment and maintenance of inhumanity by nothing more than apathetic ignorance of those who would rather not know or acknowledge aspects of parts of our own and other’s lives we would rather deny exist. By refusing to pay witness to “others” pain, we deny ourselves of our own. The more we define “them” as separate from us, the more we can rationalize our treatment of “them” as unworthy of attention and basic human consideration. We as entitled Americans have developed a “litmus test” of “others” who either cannot or choose not to live up to our societal expectations. Those expectations include the silencing of stories created behind the walls of our homes, businesses, agencies and organizations that fail to reflect on and consider the truth inherent in the bogus story of American Exceptionalism.
No, we are not being bombed or watching the mutilation of friends and family. Those are the blatant atrocities we have committed against the people in other parts of our world. We have rationalized our inhumanity based on defects in individual and nation character, choices of government and sovereignty, religion, language and speech, and ultimately differences in the color of skin. The acceptance of this idea of American Exceptionalism allows us to rape natural resources of other countries, “for their own good… ” We choose to consume more and more as the ravenous, unsatiated people we have become. In our efforts to fill the emptiness in our lives with things, we deplete “others” of what is rightfully theirs.
My Central American Experience
I spent 4 months traveling in Mexico and Central America. I lived like the people and so was able to learn a great deal about the corporate take-over of other county resources and witnessed the audacity the the erosion of other countries sovereignty through the actions United States corporate entities impose abroad. As I traveled in Honduras I saw banana and coffee plantations overtaken by American companies armed with native workers cultivating and tending their own native vegetation at mere pennies to the dollar. The resources of the local areas eventually heading for the never ending appetites of a populace convinced that the more and more acquired can calm the growing dissatisfaction and disengagement Americans have with their hearts and souls over 1500 miles away.
We stopped in Puerto Cortez and watched an American freighter pull in. It was the Mary Sheridan from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and it was the time of the Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua. Military equipment was being unloaded for the United States military base in Comayagua, Honduras, other blatant evidence of American sense of entitlement. I turned from the scene to enter a local hospedaje to have desayuno (breakfast). I sat down suddenly aware of the freeze dried Sanka coffee on the table… More evidence of the fact that corporate greed had taken over Honduran land and resources at a significant discount, only to be sold back to the locals at an inflated cost and diminished quality. I looked up and the poster said it all. It was a illustration of the world with a fist crushing the life out of it. It said simply this… “Tercer Mundo”. Indeed, the third world is being crushed by the greed and sense of entitlement that separates individuals from their humanity. It was one of the most formative lessons of my life.
As if to accentuate the point… Traveling back through Honduras from our stay outside in the military base at Comayagua, we traveled through Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, to stop to get a visa to travel through El Salvador back to Guatemala heading back home. We had been planning to go to Costa Rica but were having problems finding out the how safe it would be for two gringos headed over land through Nicaragua. After hearing of a Canadian volunteer executed by the Contra Rebels a mere 3 kilometers from our location we chose to head home. Heading south through El Salvador would cut down the amount of travel needed to enter Guatemala. It seems that our lessons were not finished…
We were told that we had to stop at the El Salvadoran embassy in Tegucigalpa to go obtain the needed visa. We had transversed the blocks in proximity to the Honduran Presidential palace multiple times, getting more and more exhausted by our efforts. Nearby we watched locals coming in and out of the main mercado. The hill we had been repeatedly transversing rose above the local river way and the valley below. We had headed around the same block when there was a burst of what sounded like machine gun fire. Rat it tat tat tat. Looking down at the mercado close by and up the streets with the local tiendas I watched those nearby freeze, scream and run. Owners of local shops looked out anxiously when another round was heard. Rat it tat tat tat. Everyone ran for the nearby shops as the owners slammed their doors closed. I dashed in with them after imploring my dazed and frozen partner to take action. He was standing in the middle of the street seemingly immobilized by the shock. “Jeffrey,” I screamed at him, “A coup!” Before he could move a large, earth shattering explosion went off as a mushroom cloud emerged from below the river.
There we stayed with many local residents in a local tienda as the sound of machine gun fire and continued explosions ran on. It seemed like an eternity but the machine gun fire and explosions began to recede. Slowly, as if moles emerging from the depths of the soil afraid to face the brightness of the sun, we emerged.
News flash… A fireworks factory nearby had blown up. It didn’t matter. I had paid witness to the fear generated by the reality of war intimately known by the citizens of this less privileged country, a war created and maintained by United States interests in the acquisition natural resources of these unacknowledged and disrespected sovereign places.
And still there was more to learn on this journey. We ended up going directly to the El Salvadoran border where we were denied a visa. I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to the sound of the machine gun fire heard from the Chiapas Mountains of southern Mexico, through Guatemala, the distant but visible mountains of El Salvador and Honduras or the appearance of 12 and 13 year old boys carrying oozes and M-16s boarding the many buses we took on route to our many destinations along our way. I came to realize that I had become more disconcerted by the fact that by the time we were attempting to travel home through El Salvador I barely noticed either the boys or the machine gun fire anymore.
On the way back, again having to transverse the Honduran countryside towards the Guatemala border, we found ourselves on a former United States school bus. It like all the others we encountered from southern Mexico south were in terrible shape, had bald, overused tires and were the only source of transportation on roads that were poorly attended and the nearby cliffs that plunged great depths.
On the way to Santa Rosa de Copan I met a self described mercenary soldier hired by the United States government to fight in Nicaragua. He had found conversing with me helpful because he did not speak even the most rudimentary level of Spanish. I, on the other hand, was fairly fluent by that time. I was horrified by his bragging of killing the many people he encountered. As we sat on the dilapidated school bus enduring his self aggrandizing, we rounded a curve over a high cliff. There was a large jolt and everyone was thrown forward.The bus rocked dangerously towards the right side of the cliff lifting up on two wheels and then slamming solidly down. There was a hissing sound emanating from the engine as the driver screamed at us all to get off the bus. Again Jeffrey stood frozen as I grabbed his arm and guided him to the back of the bus where we all were disembarking.
There in front of us was an outdated pale yellow pick up truck. An elderly abuela and abuelo sat, their eyes permanently pried open as if in shock, their hands resisting the brunt of the impact just endured. They sat frozen in their intimate death embrace.
I was in shock. The complete disconnect by the mercenary killer and the death of these two elderly travelers just seemed to capture in real terms the poster I had seen at the hospadaje in Puerto Cortez, “Tercer Mundo”, the illustration of the world with a fist crushing the life out of the third world.
The completely disconnected mercenary, aware of the trauma etched on my face then, without understanding his own ignorance, turned to my partner and told him, “She couldn’t handle Nicaragua. The Sandinistas would rape and then kill her without question.” This coming from a man incapable of understanding the pleas and cries of those he was executing! Reality can bite us in the ass but only if we are humble enough to understand its messages.
The American Dream?
We as Americans have chosen to numb ourselves to the outcries of the world’s population because we would rather pretend that the American Dream still exists. And yet we are having more and more difficulty acquiring the dream ourselves. We try to convince ourselves that the reasons are within our own control and so we become whatever is required to be worthy of what we need most. Those needs depend on our compliance to our prescribed role, an unspoken but acquired expectation at birth from Big Business and Big Brother for the exchange of revenue, assets and basic resources in substitution for the inherent sense of love, companionship, and sense of self worth even denied even the most compliant. Those who cannot or will not acquiesce face the other extreme, a lack of basic sense of safety, shelter, food, and warmth. The determination of our placement is our ability to join the assembly line expected in the production of those things we have been taught that we need to satiate the empty hearts and lack of life purpose that consumes us. As we ally ourselves with the acquisition of money and material goods we place more stress on our country’s resources and lose our connection to each other. The pundits would have you think that with just a little more effort from us things will get better. But as corporate and government entities hold more of the revenue and assets for themselves, there is less and less for the rest of us.
We have been lead to believe that there is not enough to go around and that has created and perpetuated our pursuit of being good enough for the money, power, prestige and respect seemingly just out of our reach. We sell out our humanity and morality to avoid the punishment dished out to those who do not acquiesce to pursue the fabled American Dream, a dream that very likely never existed in the first place.
It didn’t matter the new immigrants that came upon our shores or how far back they can be recalled, they were all held with disdain. And we, the entitled “chosen people” from European descent aren’t even native, yet we felt entitled to commit genocide on First Nation people and still to this day deprive them of their land, voice and effective participation. Acquisition of commodities by white settlers is older than even our own country and its foundations create the abomination of human indifference being experienced at this time.
We have all endured abuse and trauma and accepted it without question. As we respond to facing our own and others trauma, we actively choose to deny its existence. We put on our fake smiles and offer one line panaceas that do nothing but cover up the injustices taking place here and abroad. We trigger (get hostile) when someone challenges our perception of the world because we must, without questioning accept what information has been doled out to us to be included as “privileged”. That is the embodiment of compliance and compliance without question leads to tyranny. As a result we have become THE tyrannical empire of both ourselves and others in the world.
We the people have chosen tyranny to prove our right to American Exceptionalism. We overpower that which we can take advantage of. We feel entitled to take what we perceive that we need without regard for the consequences we have imposed on others. Looking to others for the remedy for our empty lives keeps us from acknowledging the problem inherent within us!
In our families we see the mirroring of this distortion of reality. To face this fact could change our own interpersonal relations and our interactions with other countries around the world. I use a story to illustrate my point….
Trauma 101
There is a boy who grows up with an abusive father. Now there are common factors that let this boy know that his father is likely to physically assault him. His father drinks heavily, always at night after work. After consuming enough to quiet the demons in his own head, he is filled with rage. He drives quickly into the driveway looking for a release from the unwanted emotions within him. The driveway is made of gravel and so the car skids into place as he gets home. He begins screaming for the boy slurring his words. The back door is yanked open violently and is slammed back into place. The father stinks of alcohol and wreaks from the miscalculated attempt to down the last beer in a hurry. The boy, depending on his reaction learns to protect himself in the ways governed by his neurological effort to survive what can only be seen as an attack; fight, flight, freeze, or “float” (coined and adapted from my crania-sacral therapist) His age and ability to fight back his fathers escalating violent reactions can and will negate the ability to stay and “face the music”. If he is younger and more vulnerable he may choose to take flight by running away out the front door to a possible ally and friend who can help, or choose to take refuge in his closet, safe from the upcoming promise of being assaulted. His father may also call him names if he can’t “take it like a man.” In that situation there is no where that he is safe, so he freezes and may dissociate, (float) a way the brain protects us from physical and emotional threats that are perceived as life threatening.
Now it is 20 years later and he is engaged to his high school sweetheart. She calls to let him know how excited that she is because she just received a promotion. She tells him that she is going out with her best friends to celebrate. He can’t understand why his breathing is altered and his gut feels clenched (physical signs that he has triggered). As it gets later and later he struggles with the overwhelming physical sensations that he is experiencing.
While she is at the bar before leaving a man slips on the floor and spills his drink on her. She pays no attention looking forward to head home. She drives back to the house later than anticipated. Her excitement causes her to skid into the gravel driveway. She calls to him excited to share the events of the day. In her excitement she opens the door hastily and slams it closed.
Every single event in her journey that evening builds within the well learned triggers that signal her fiancee’s history of having to protect himself. He can use his larger size and (fight) go on the attack. “Where have you been?” His voice and gestures threatening, possibly using verbal reprimands and intimidation, maybe even becoming physical himself. He may take flight by taking off to somewhere he can feel a sense of relief, or freeze, physically, emotionally or both. He may “float” away somewhere else in his mind, disconnected from the experience that so closely resembles the horrors he grew up with.
No matter his way of coping, she is apt to judge his “erratic behavior” as being out of control. She may bad mouth him to family and friends or worse yet, lodge a domestic violence complaint, maybe even call the police… None of these good for the integrity of the family unit.
In the workplace
Triggered professionals, agency and judicial personnel are dangerous for us all. They are often out of touch with their own predispositions to triggers formed in their own lives and so project their own issues on co-workers and worse yet, the clients that they are supposed to help. This fact complicates “recovery” in medical facilities, mental health and addiction facilities, and with “professionals” of all backgrounds.
The courts are NOT there to protect the family unit. They judge “facts” most often without insight into the events that could answer “why” people act as they do while providing insight into the steps to help individuals, families, and therefore professionals, agencies, organizations, governmental services, and judicial establishments heal from the need to assert blame before understanding.
The cycle is self perpetuating. We truly do “assume the habits of our oppressors” unconsciously acting out the horrors we have known on the unprepared; children, people with cognitive disabilities, the already traumatized, the elderly, the homeless. We find it convenient to blame those who suffer the most because we do not want to be reminded of the hidden secrets that take residence in our bodies, those tender places that scream their injustices when faced with mirrors that remind us of the true path that we have traveled.
Summation
We are by this very example choosing “learned helplessness” by isolating ourselves from the power inherent in the common narratives built into our lives. There are no “others”. There is just the common victimization we all suffer under those who position themselves to horde that which is not rightfully their own while blaming those that they take reserves and assets from. We will not find humanity within ourselves or those that surround us until we accept that fact. It is our choice and we need to take responsibility for our decision and be willing to face the consequences of that choice. There can be no resolution of the disparities we see until we face the truths of the demons we have given our blind allegiance.
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