Sunday Story...Emotional Rescue

Sunday Story…Emotional Rescue

A bomb goes off in a crowded plaza, killing and injuring dozens of people. An airliner is shot out of the sky resulting in all on board perishing. Innocent people, going about their daily lives, are hurt or killed with no apparent reason. They were just taking their laundry to the cleaners or meeting a friend for lunch when violence erupted and their entire lives were altered.

This is terrorism as we understand it today. Terrorism is often defined as the systematic use of violence or coercion to achieve your goals (usually political). Terrorism is generally thought of as bad. Although it is often said that one group’s terrorist is another group’s freedom fighter. I think the difference may be the use of violence against indiscriminate targets as opposed to waging a fight against participants who signed up for the fray.

Most of us (luckily and hopefully) will never experience this kind of random violence in our lives. Although it is possible, at this point in most of our lives we are not a in place where that is going to happen (as opposed to living in Jerusalem or Afghanistan).

It is much more likely that you and I will be victims of something almost as terrible…Emotional Terrorism. This is a much more personal and private form of terrorism. The aim is really the same…to get what you want through violent or coercive means. Rather than blowing up a shopping square the emotional terrorist blows up relationships. When they don’t get what they want the easy way they resort to any means possible to achieve their end.

If I ask for what I want from you and you say yes, no or maybe, I should be able to hear your answer and move on. But if my request really wasn’t a request but rather a demand then I cannot hear anything but a yes. If you deny my demand and I resort to other tactics to get what I want I am engaging in a form of emotional terrorism. Maybe I decide to with hold my love until you acquiesce to my demand. Maybe I will engage in some behavior explicitly designed to create a negative reaction in you (cheating, flirting etc.). Maybe I will deny you some previously agreed upon favor or activity. These are all forms of the sort of terrorism I am talking about.
When you look at this sort of behavior it certainly looks bad. It does not look like the kind of thing any of us really want to be doing does it? A couple questions pop up in my mind when I start looking at this kind of behavior. Where did you learn it? Why would you do it and think it was OK. Is what you want really so important that you are willing to risk our relatedness to get it?

Often this behavior is learned as we grow up. And sometimes our parent inadvertently trained us into it. Maybe it was modeled by our parents. And often we see it in popular TV shows…the dad has to sleep on the couch because he didn’t do this or that. Maybe when we threw a tantrum we got what we wanted in spite of parental insistence that we would never get it. After all, this emotional terrorism is the adult version of the temper tantrum we see in 2 and 3 year olds. The stakes are higher, the behavior maybe more subtle and manipulative but it is still a tantrum.

We do it because we haven’t grown up in confidence enough yet. We do it because our maturity level is still that of an adolescent. In other words I want what I want because what I want is more important than anything else anyone else wants. In other words it is very ego-centric. We don’t have the confidence to hear a no. Our self confidence and our self image are tied up in what we want, not in what the other person wants. This is not a grown up way of being.

And again what you want is more important than anything else including our relatedness. Maybe your experience is that people stick around for more of your bad behavior. Maybe you have been trained to do this by people who allow you to get away with it and still continue the relationship.

Guess what…I am an emotional terrorist. So are you. Well maybe not you. You might never have engaged in nefarious, manipulative, underhanded or mean things to get what you want. Ever. Honestly though, let’s get a little consciousness going here shall we? I know I have done these things. I try not to do them now. I am willing to hear your no. I am willing to hold my limits and boundaries and respect yours as well. What I want is not more important than being related to you. But I will also not tolerate bad behavior from you either because the relatedness I have with myself will not allow for your bad behavior.

I suggest you start looking around your life and start rooting out the emotional terrorists. I think the best place to start is with you. Take a really good look at how you are interacting with the significant people in your life. Are you making clear requests (not demands)? Are you being clear about the behaviors you will not tolerate? Are you clear what your limits and boundaries are? It is not going to work to eliminate the emotional terrorists in your life if you are the biggest one. Clean your own house first.

Emotional terrorism…it’s just not OK.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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