The internal problem is how do you deal with tragedy and malevolence, and you can say well? I'm not prepared. It's like yeah fair enough
Unsurprising, especially if you were over protected as a child it's not [a] good idea to over protect your kids because the snakes are going
To come into the garden no matter what you do and so then you instead of trying to keep the damn snakes away
What you do is you arm your child with something that can help them chop them into pieces
And make the world out of them so that the trick for human
Thriving in the face of suffering malevolence is strength not protection
It's a completely different idea we also know this clinically we know for example that if you treat people with exposure therapy for Agra Phobia
Which is Roughly speaking the fear of Chaos?
I would say the fear of everything you don't make them less afraid you make them braver
It's not the same thing because with an agoraphobic see what happens to them is is the fault
They never conceptualize death and suffering
They're naive right it never enters their theater of their imaginations because they're protected from it
But then something happens this often happens to women in their 40s because they're the people most [likely] to develop Agra Phobia
Something happens there they've been protected from Chaos by Authority their entire life
So maybe they had an overprotective father and then they went to an overprotective boyfriend and then they went to an overprotective
husband and maybe they were willing to be subjugated to all three of those because of the
protection right so
so that's the bargain they stay weak and dependent and maybe they have to because that's the only way they can appeal to the
person who's Hyper protective
But the price they pay for that is that they're not sufficiently competent and then something happens in their life often [in] their 40s
They develop heart palpitations. Maybe as a consequence of menopause their heart starts to
Beat erratically and they think oh no death. It's like well, who are you going to talk to about that right?
There's no
protection from
[Authority] for that or maybe their friend gets divorced or maybe their sister dies or something like that it brings up the specter of
Mortality and maybe the [spectre] of malevolence and mortality and it brings us up in a way that
[Authority] recourse to Authority cannot solve and
So then they have panic
What happens they go out they get afraid they feel their heart beating then they get afraid of their heart beating because they think oh
No, I'm going to die and they think oh no
I'm going to die and I'm going to make a fool of myself while I'm doing it and attract a lot of attention
[so] the two big Fears come up
Mortality and Social judgment, [then] they have a panic attack
It's like tiger flights going out of control very very unpleasant [then] they start to avoid the places
They've had a panic attack then they end up not being able to go anywhere
So then [Kiya] math has come back [write] a huge monster [a] little victim and so what do you do with them well?
There's no saying note. There's no time app. That's done right their naivety is over
They've had a direct contact with the threat of mortality and Social judgment
They've met the terrible mother and they met the terrible father and there's no going [back]. There's [no] saying oh, the world is safe
It's not safe not at all
It's not safe the fact that you think it's safe means that you were living in an unconscious bubble
That was sort of provided to you by your culture
[it's] a gift and now that's been shattered and so now what do you do?
Well the answer is you retreat until you're in your house, and there's nowhere you can go
You're the ultimate frozen rabbit right and your life is hell, because you can't function
The alternative is let's take apart the things you're afraid of
Let's expose you to them. You know carefully and
programmatically and
then you'll learn that you can you're actually tougher than you think you never knew that and maybe you didn't want to take on the
responsibility because you know people play a role in their [own] demise so to speak when you had opportunity to go out and explore or
Withdraw because you were afraid you chose to withdraw because you were afraid
so it's not only that you were over protected often it's that you were willing to take advantage of the
Fact that you were over protected and run back there whenever you had the opportunity you know
So maybe you're a kid in the playground right, and you're having some trouble [with] other kids
And you know in the back of [your] mind?
I should deal this with deal with this myself
But you go and tell your mom and get her to intervene and you know that that's not right
You know that you're breaking the social contract, but it's easier
And that's what you do you run off [to] an authority figure and hide behind the great father, right?
Roughly speaking well the problem with that is you don't learn how to do it yourself
So then you have to relearn it painfully when you're 40 so then you take people out
You say well, what are you afraid of rank it from [1] to [10]?
So 10 is make a list of 10 [things] you're afraid of the least the thing you're least afraid of will call number 10
So we'll start with that. Okay. Well. I'm afraid of elevators [ok] well. Let's let's look at a picture of an elevator
Let's have you imagine being in an elevator
Let's go out to an elevator and let you watch the terrible jaws of death open because that's how you're responding to it symbolically
Right and you're going to do that at it at the the closest proximity you can manage
You find out you go do [that] it works. You're nervous as hell
Especially at it from an anticipatory perspective shaking you go out you stop you watch it happen
And you actually calm down you do that 10 times it no longer bothers you well what you've learned that you didn't die
But more importantly than that
You've learned that you could withstand the threat [of] death
That's what you've learned, and then you move a [little] closer, and then you move a little closer
And then you move a little closer, and finally you're back in what's no [longer] the elevator from a symbolic perspective
It's a tomb right it's it's it's a place [of] enclosure and isolation and you learn
Hmm turns out I can withstand that and then you're met much more together much more confident
And that's often one of the things that often happens in situations like that
I've seen this multiple times is that if
You run someone through an exposure?
Training process like that and toughen them up they'll often start standing up to people around them in a way
They never did before because they wouldn't stand up for themselves before because they weren't willing to undermine the protection
See if you're protecting [me], I can't bother you
Because I can't afford to forsake your protection
So if I'm going to play that game, I'm going to be high hide behind you then I can't challenge you
so that's no good because
That's sometimes why people you see this with guys very frequently they're still
[death] be afraid of their father's judgment when they're in their 30s or 40s
It's like well
Why not because they still want to believe that there's someone out [there] that knows and so they're willing to accept the subjugation
because it doesn't force them [to] challenge the idea that there's someone out there that knows because that's the advantage of having your father as
a judge right if he knows
Well, what if he doesn't what if no one knows any better than you well. That's a rough [thing]
You don't until you realize that you're not an adult right? That's really technically the point of realization of adulthood
Is that no one actually knows what you should do more than you do
[I] mean, it's a horrible realization because what the hell. Do you know it's a terrible realization and people will often pick slavery
Permanent slavery to the spirit of the [Great] Father let's say over that realization, and it's completely understandable
But the problem with it is is that there's more to you than you think and so if you continue to hide?
Behind that figure then you never have a chance to understand that there's more to you than you think
Far more to you than you think maybe there's enough to you so that you can actually
Withstand the threat of mortality without collapsing maybe even withstand the threat of malevolence without collapsing
Who knows it's certainly possible?
And it's not an abstract question it's exactly the sort of question [that] you address in
The psychotherapeutic process it's always the question that you address and the answer is often in the affirmative
Because people can get unbelievably tough and you know that because people work in emergency
Words and hospitals right or they work in in palliative care awards, or they work as mortuary assistants
I mean these people have bloody rough jobs
You know or they're on the front line of police investigation into you know highness child abuse crimes
and so they're confronting malevolence on a regular basis, and you know those are [very] stressful jobs, but people do them and
some [people] do them without even being
Damaged by them although that's a harder thing because you can see horrible things you know things you'll never forget