1. The national male suicide toll exceeds the road toll. Of 2000 suicides last year 80% were the guys. Every day in Australia five men die by suicide. Relationships for men are substantial, and even if they appear to give the opposite impression, they are central issues. Source
This observation is not entirely unrelated to the movement in values toward Individuality and Survival observed in Americans indicated below On Freedom. If you compare values in the Fulfillment half to values in the Survival half I reckon there is increasing likelihood of male suicide as a guy's values descend to the bottom right hand corner.
Significantly, this movement of values is away from both sides of the political spectrum here in Australia as they are in USA. So who represents these voters in Australia. Who are the stake holders in this movement toward crude materialism, ostentatious consumption and acceptance of violence. I don't think we can reverse the tragedy of male suicide without dealing with those stake holders who have a powerful influence on our economy, national wealth and foreign policy.
To put it cynically, male suicide is part of the waste in this environmentally disastrous way of life. $aus9 billion of food put in garbage bins each year, 8 million prescriptions of anti-depressants and so on. What's a few more lives thrown in the bins. Life is cheap in the military industrial complex.
Contrast that movement of values with the directions Canadians and Europeans are taking in the second diagram below. They are moving toward flexible families, brand apathy, flexible gender identity and rejection of authority. It seems to me those values would include many more of the marginalized people that go onto to suicide or suicide bombing than the direction we as a nation are taking.
2. Classics in the history of psychology - on line texts developed by Christopher D. Green York University, Toronto, Canada where you will find Maslow's Theory of Human Motivation. July/August 2006
3. First rule of a thinking environment: pay unbelievable beautiful attention to the Thinker, even if you don't agree with them or like them. An on-line assessment of your time to think.
4. Here a report on listening in general medical practice, which you will notice describe communication problems in marriage, in bold.
- doctors frequently interrupted patients before they had completed their opening statement — after a mean time of only 18 seconds!
- only 23% of patients completed their opening statement
- in only one of 51 interrupted statements was the patient allowed to complete their opening statement later
- 94% of all interruptions concluded with the doctor obtaining the floor
- the longer the doctor waited before interruption, the more complaints were elicited
- allowing the patient to complete the opening statement led to a significant reduction in late-arising problems
- clarifying or closed questions were the most frequent cause of interruption but any utterance by the doctor that
- specifically encouraged the patient to give further information about any one problem could also cause disruption: this, perhaps surprisingly, included echoing of the patient’s words
- in 34 our of 51 visits, the doctor interrupted the patient after the initial concern, apparently assuming that the first complaint was the chief one
- the serial order in which the patients presented their problems was not related to their clinical importance
- most patients who were allowed to complete their opening statement without interruption took less that 60 seconds and none took longer the 150 seconds, even when encouraged to continue.
5. 'People Pleasers are often the unwitting contributors to family dysfunction, although they are far from being the only culprit in a dysfunctional family. People Pleasers tend to have Injustice Collector counterparts: the Injustice Collector in the family remembers every slight, real or imagined, and throws it back in the People Pleaser's face, while the People Pleaser scurries to set things right with the angry Injustice Collector. The cycle will repeat indefinitely, because the particular dysfunctions of the People Pleaser and the Injustice Collector are a perfect fit with one another: Injustice Collectors feel entitled and People Pleasers feel that everyone ELSE is entitled.
The unfortunate outcome in the dysfunctional family is that either the People Pleaser has to become progressively more crippled and entrenched in their subservient role in the family, or else they become healthier and stronger and ultimately are accused of breaking up the family.'
Note these reciprocal roles nationally and internationally.
6. Can there be healing without intimacy? The whole of this website is in a sense an exploration of this singular question.
I am reading 'Michelangelo and The Reinvention of the Human body' by James Hall. He explores the ice maiden theme, which Michelangelo reprises from Dante and his Beatrice. He asks how could a mother, herself divine and 'knowing' her child's fate allow him to go to his destiny. Michelangelo challenges the sweetness and light of the then and now prevailing, Madonna iconography (often reflected in the contemporary construction of marriage - wife the Madonna, lover the whore) by presenting her as having held herself up and at a distance with a self-sacrificing nobility and yet with her tenderness unavailable to the viewer. Could you imagine the Madonna of the Pieter indulging in baby talk?
Her vulnerability only begins to show in the moment captured by this Pieter of 1498-9. Here she has not appeared to age. It is Rabbi Jesus whose age has been distorted by Michelangelo. In his earlier pieces taken as a whole, he has been catapulted from a newborn to a muscular suckling and then into adulthood and on to the cross quite suddenly. No childhood or adolescence at all.
It seems Michelangelo's Madonna must have had some source of self-sustaining intimacy from the outset. No doubt about her value as the Mother nor any disconnection from that knowing. The utter exposure and vulnerability of that limp saviour in her arms is a heart breaking truth. It is also a moment that is available in marriage - a healing without that burden of messiah, crucifixion or gender. It's not safe to be so utterly exposed and vulnerable to a person who holds themselves at that kind of distance until you're dead. But guess what, it happens in marriage.
7. There is a golden hour following a traumatic accident severe enough to have killed outright. People who live on, report near death experiences: a choice point sometimes on a hill looking down on one's whole life flashing passed; angels; revisits by dead friends and relatives; an incredible peace, as if passing over to another realm where the rules of the old life are gone. In this hour the body's designs for survival kick in; its wisdom and the habits of a life time come into play, and help at hand often of strangers who make the difference. Many come out of this with a decision, as if granted a second chance - they now know how to live.
I was recently reminded of this by two clients with breathing habits associated with stress patterns at work and home - one who holds her breath when listening and thinking and one who takes an alarming, sharp in-breath as she moves onto the next subject. The first was crushed by a car, had profuse internal bleeding, which should have killed her. She was conscious and held her breath, thus increasing carbon dioxide concentration in her blood, which relaxes all the smooth muscles lowers blood pressure and increases uptake of oxygen in every cell.
In part as a result of her habitual calm response to crisis, a huge blood clot formed over the ruptured organ and the bleeding stopped. If she had panicked and hyperventilated the effect would have been opposite and likely terminal. The second had a drowning accident as a child and when reaching the water's surface gasped for breath, fearing death. She held her breath underwater long enough to survive. Both are now stuck with habitual breath holding when they don't need it and not breath reduction when they do.
To bring both into calm quiet breathing required mindfulness awareness practices on the breath, not with the intention of controlling the breath but simply of becoming aware of the pattern and its effects in their bodies and on people at work and home. The next stage is Buteyko breathing.
8. It seems to me that preparing for marriage, starting or managing a business and planning for retirement have many relational similarities. The average duration of marriage and retirement are about the same - 20 to 25 years. They are of equal importance to health, happiness, contentment and creativity. Both depend on the clarity of thinking that goes into them. THAT thinking and the success of the venture itself depend on the vibrancy of our relationships and in our social networks.
The quality of our thinking depends on the quality of attention another gives in listening to our thinking. Yet very few couples considering marriage, retirement or a business venture consult relationship experts. Most use property and finance experts.
One of the founders of the UK Relationship Foundation recently visited Australia and put this quote on the web site, Relationships are the missing piece of the political puzzle. As we struggle to adapt to the domination of the bottom line, the factor invariably omitted from the equation is relationships. LINDSAY TANNER, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE, AUSTRALIA.
Similarly, 'At the risk of stating the obvious, human interaction and relationships are the bases of everything we do in business – or at least they should be. This is not another comment on relationship marketing; it is rather a clarion call for business leaders to adopt a relational philosophy to guide all the decisions they make' Source
A tragic example of the consequences of poor listening occurred in the George Bush's White House, January 2003. Reported by Bob Woodward in his book 'State of Denial' and extracted here.
9. I was reminded today of how the things that intially attracted us to a person can grow into a problem as a committed relationship develops. That is in the nature of the workshop of intimacy. Our leading edge takes a back seat once it has done the job of securing a relationship. Then the latent areas of our selves are revealed and exposed to growth in the relationship. There can be no intimacy without vulnerability. Everyone has buttons and they become vulnerable to being pressed as we develop in the relationship. One of my clients told me that a reasonable person in an intimate relationship would not have buttons.
