Joy -VS- Happiness, Part I

by Sandra L. Brown, MA

You were out looking for a little happiness when you stumbled upon Dr. Jekyll as he was appearing wonderful and considerate. Strangely, before you knew it, evil Mr. Hyde was instead dismantling anything that resembled happiness and leaving in it’s wake, destruction and despair.

Despair is a long way from the happiness you were initially seeking. How did you get from mere happiness-seeking to a totally despairing life? How can you embrace the happiness that you set out to find?

It might not even be ‘happiness’ per se that you were initially seeking. You might have been looking for someone who was introspective, spiritual and existential. But you tell me…

Happiness is external. It’s based on situations, events, people, places, things, and thoughts. Happiness is connected to your hope for a relationship or your hope for a future with someone. Happiness is linked to that ‘some day when I meet the right guy’ or ‘when he starts changing and acting right’ or ‘when he goes to counseling.’

Happiness is future oriented and it puts all its eggs in someone elses basket. It is dependent on outside situations, people, or events to align with your expectations so that the end result is your happiness. These expectations can be seen especially during the holidays when whether or not you have a ‘merry christmas’ or a ‘happy holiday’ depends on whether or not he is with you, shows up, isn’t drunk, isn’t cheating,
or a list of other behaviors you expect for a ‘happy holiday’ experience. Unfortunately, pathology rarely obliges in that way. So when the relationship falls thru, or he isn’t wonderful at Christmas, or you kick him out, or he cheats again, or he runs off with your money, or he was a con artist…then your holidays were not ‘happy’ and your happiness
was crushed.

Unhappiness is the result. It’s a typical and inevitable result in pathological love relationships. Afterall, it’s the only way it CAN turn out. There are no happy endings to pathological relationships. After Christmas and New Years, he will still be pathological and you will still have the same problems you had in November. You notice that The Institute has not written a book called ‘How to Have a Happy Relationship With a Pathological.’

Chronic unhappiness leads to despair and depression. Remember the emotional roller coaster you rode with him? You were happy when he was good, and miserable when he was bad? You were hypnotically lulled into happy-land when you were with him and in intrusive thought-hell when you weren’t? Your happiness was hitched to his rear end. When he was around (and behaving) you were happy. When he wasn’t, your happiness followed his rear end right out the door and you were obsessing, wondering, and pacing.

Happiness is what you feel when he says the ‘right romantic’ stuff, buys you a ring or moves in. But happiness is not joy because joy is not external, it can’t be bought and it is not conditional on someone else’s behavior. In fact, joy is not contingent on anything in order to exist. You don’t have to have ‘him’ for the holidays to have joy. Likewise, you don’t have to get revenge, snoop out his short comings, tell the new girlfriend the truth or any thing else in order to have joy. You can lose in court with him, already have lost your life savings to him, watch him out with a new woman, or live out of the back of your car and still have joy.

You’re probably thinking,’Sure you can have joy in those circumstances if you are Mother Teresa!’ Joy is almost a mystery, isn’t it? It’s a spiritual quality that is internal. My mother had a lot of joy and I learned from watching her joy. Her pathological man ran off with her life savings forcing her to work well past retirement. It forced her to live simply so moved to a one room beach shack and drove a motorcycle. For cheap entertainment, she walked the beach and painted nudes. She drank cheap grocery store wine that came in a box, bought her clothes from thrift shops, and made beach totes from crocheting plastic grocery bags together. She recycled long before it was hip to do it. But what she recycled most and best was pain….into joy.

Instead of looking externally for yet another relationship to remove the sting of the last one, or to conquer the boredom she might feel at being alone…she cultivated internal and deep abiding joy. It was both an enigma and a privlege to watch this magnificent life emerge from the ashes of great betrayal.

I use her a lot as an example of someone who went ahead and got a great life and turned this rotten deal into an exquistie piece of art called her life. Anyone who spoke of my mother spoke MOST of her radiant joy. She had the ‘IT’ factor long before it was even called ‘IT.’ Women flocked to her to ask ‘How did you do it? How did you shed the despair and bitterness of what he did and grow into this? THIS bright shining joyful person? What is your secret?’

Somewhere along that rocky path of broken relationships with pathological men, she learned that happiness is fleeting if it’s tied to a man’s shirt tails. She watched too many of the shirt tails walk out the door with her happiness tied to his butt. In order to find the peacefulness that resides inside, she had to learn what was happiness and what was joy.

The transitory things of life are happiness-based. She had a big house and lost a big house when she divorced my father. She had a big career and lost a big career when she got ‘too old’ according to our culture to have the kind of job she had. She had diamonds and lost diamonds.

So she entered into voluntary simplicity where the fire of purging away ‘stuff’ left a clearer picture and path to the internal life. When stuff, people, and the problems they bring fall away there is a stillness. Only in that stillness can we ever find the joy that resides inside of us, dependent on nothing external in order to exist. During this holiday season, this is a great concept to contemplate.

Her joy came from deeply held spiritual beliefs but it also came from a place even beyond that. Joy comes when you make peace with who you are, where you are, why you are, and who you are not with. When you need nothing more than your truth and the love of a good God to bring peace, then you have settled into the abiding joy that is not rocked by relationships. It’s not rocked by anything.

It wasn’t rocked as she layed dying four years ago in the most peaceful arms of grace–a blissful state of quiet surrender and anticipation. Those who were witness to her death still tell me that her death brought new understanding to them about the issue of real joy. Joy in all things….death of a dream, death of relationship, death of a body. Joy from within, stripped down, naked and beautiful.

Untie your happiness from the ends of his shirt tales…

(Watch for Part II next month!)

Sandra L. Brown, M.A. is the Founder and CEO of The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction and Public Pathology Education.  She is the author of several best selling books, including How to Spot a Dangerous Man and Why Women Love Psychopaths. www.saferelationshipsmagazine.com

Don’t Fake the Funk

By Sandra L. Brown

‘Put a smile on your face no matter what’ ‘turn your frown upside down’ ‘if you keep your face like that it’ll freeze’–who ever came up with these statements was never in a relationship with a dangerous man.

The predominant thing women want to know in their phone counseling sessions is: ‘Is what I lived thru in my dangerous man experience normal?’ ‘The effects I suffer today from that experience–do others have those experiences too?’ ‘Why am I so depressed/anxious/obsessed/paranoid?’ “What is it called that I have and will I always be like this?’

Women greatly under estimate the damage done in dangerous and/or pathological relationships. Why? Often because they have been in so many of them that it’s now normal…being with someone so dangerous is normal AND feeling this bad is normal. It’s been so long since they didn’t have depression, anxiety, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, obsessions or paranoia–they have no idea what it feels like to not have these symptoms.

They also under estimate the damage because some were raised in families where dangerous behavior was also the norm. The chaos, drama, trauma, stress, and instability were the foundations of their home lives. Their childhood simply melded into their adulthood of the same kinds of relationship–except now, by their own choosing.

Women who have gone from pathological families into pathological relationships have been chronically depressed so long that the biochemistry in their brain is currently altered. They have been anxious for so long that that their biochemistry is altered by all the adrenaline they have lived on for so long. Long term exposure to chronic stress, so often seen in dangerous relationships, eventually can create medical disorders. Some of those disorders suspected of being linked to unrelenting traumatic exposure includes: autoimmune disorders like lupus, chronic fatigue and Epstein-Barr. Stress reactions like TMJ from teeth grinding, digestive disorders, migraines, hives and female disorders like endometriosis, phantom pelvic pain and other similar disorders.

Stress has to go somewhere and often it is crammed into the body to wreak its havoc on the body. Even when trauma has been so severe that much of it is not remembered, the body still remembers what the mind has chosen to forget. Your body always tells the truth.

Mood disorders are one of the most common disorders associated with life with disordered relationships. Women are often in denial of the extent of their depression and/or anxiety–either it now feels normal or they don’t want to face ‘what’ the relationship has cost them in medical and emotional disorders. ‘Facing the funk’ is just one way of coming to the truth of how ‘bodily expensive’ that relationship was. You can’t heal what you don’t see. So taking your own inventory about ‘how’ you really are is the first step in recovery. Mood disorders are often manageable thru various means but you won’t be managing anything until you stop faking how effected you are by your own relational history.

Many women emerge from these relationships either diagnosed, or not yet diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — an anxiety disorder so extreme that the core concept of self is often fragmented. The cracked vessel must try to now function as an undamaged vase–but push on the crack and the vessel will break again.

Cloudy with a Chance of Grief: Seasonal Affective Disorder and Survivors of Violent Crime

By Angela Dove

Most of us are aware the winter months trigger S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in many people. Lack of sunlight and colder temperatures combine to decrease melatonin and serotonin—both important chemicals in regulating mood—while also disrupting regular sleep patterns (circadian rhythms).  As with other forms of depression, SAD appears to affect those with a genetic propensity toward depression. Psychological studies indicated that gender and location also play a role—women are more likely than men to suffer from SAD, as are those who live farther from the equator. Psychologist Donald Franklin has also posited that younger adults are more susceptible to seasonal depression.

According to the Mayo Clinic, Fall-Winter SAD can produce the following symptoms:
·        Depression
·        Hopelessness
·        Anxiety
·        Loss of energy
·        Social withdrawal
·        Oversleeping
·        Loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed
·        Appetite changes, especially a craving for foods high in carbohydrates
·        Weight gain
·        Difficulty concentrating and processing information

In severe cases, SAD can lead to poor performance in school or on the job, self-imposed social isolation, substance abuse, and even suicide.


Sound familiar? It should. Many of these symptoms are also manifest by those who have survived violent crime. This is the grieving process of the survivor who has suffered a loss: loss of a loved one through murder or abduction; loss of a relationship through the worst kind of betrayal; or even loss of faith in the ways of the world (a grief that can be both all-consuming and personally devastating).

“Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself,” wrote the Roman philosopher Seneca, and those of us living in the wake of violent crime understand that truth.  Many of us learn to go on with our lives, but our lives always incorporate the seeds of grief, and under the right circumstances, those seeds flower. Ironically, the lack of sunlight that is part of SAD can coax the seeds of grief into a devastating germination. Survivors who are feeling seasonal hopelessness or anxiety m ay find themselves experiencing their old losses with devastating freshness.

Coping
If you or someone you know is experiencing a bout of depression, don’t take it lightly. Instead, take it into the light.

Melanin and Serotonin are important champions in the body’s fight against depression, and both are influenced by sunlight. Take a walk outside on a brisk day. Pull the shades aside and sit in front of a sunny window. Or, if need be, talk to your doctor or psychologist about getting some light therapy. (My daughter was very jaundiced when she was born, and the pediatrician gave us an electric light pad that we put on her like a heating pad. This same technology that turned my carrot girl back to a healthy pink is now used with great success in the treatment of depression.)

Exercise releases another important chemical—endorphins—into the body. Your depression will rob you of energy, which discourages exercise, which only increases the depression. Don’t fall victim to this cycle.

Eating right can play an important role in improving mood. Bodies that crave comfort often crave carbohydrates, but increasing carbs can lead to weight gain, and gaining weight rarely equates to gaining happiness.

Get Real 
Yeah, alright, some carrot sticks and a brisk walk aren’t going to expel grief. (If only it were that easy!) But you do have some tools in your toolbox. And if the job is too large, seek medical attention through your MD or counselor.

Particularly, survivors of violent crime need to be aware that any internal propensity toward depression—and that seed of grief—can join up with Seasonal Depressive Disorder to create a double whammy of despondency. Look inside yourself. Look to your friends and loved ones who are survivors. And be on the watch for signs of depression. Ignoring them or wishing them away is about as effective as trusting a Cobb salad and a patch of sunlight to make all right with the world. 

Get real about the fact that, as the poet Percy Shelley wrote, “Grief returns with the revolving year.” Grief is a part of living. It will be a part of your life. It is a part of mine. But it shouldn’t be allowed to grow in darkness until it chokes out the light.



Angela Dove is an award-winning humor columnist, speaker, and author of the true crime memoir No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Penguin, 2009).

WILL THE TRAGEDY IN FORT HOOD FINALLY SEND A S.O.S. (SAVE OUR SOLDIERS)?

By Michelle Simonsen, True Crime Writer and Victim's Rights Advocate

In the spirit of Veteran’s Day, and in the unfortunate tragedy of Fort Hood; I felt it necessary to address the obvious refusal of the military and the government to appropriately address the mounting numbers of Veterans living with untreated mental illnesses.

Fort Hood may have been dealt with a massive blow of tragedy last week, but just a year ago in Fort Hood, on September 8, 2008, an altercation between a soldier and his commanding officer ended in a murder suicide.

Do you remember hearing about that case? I don’t.

The next day on September 9, 2008, a VA report acknowledged that suicide rates for young male Iraq and Afghanistan veterans hit a record high in 2006. (Cite)

Marine suicides have doubled between 2006 and 2007, and Army suicides are at the highest level since records were first kept in 1980. Reported suicide attempts jumped 500% between 2002 and 2007. “The Defense Department says the numbers may be partly attributable to better compliance with reporting requirements.” (Cite)

Reporting requirements? Better compliance? Better than what? Has the military lacked its duty in the past? Has the government been feeding us with false information and statistics that aren’t even the tip of the real iceberg?

What am I getting at? What’s my point? The government has failed our Veterans in a big way.

On November 6, 2008, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health Report stated, “Recent research indicates that an estimated 25 to 30 percent of the Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have reported symptoms of a mental disorder or cognitive condition. Untreated mental health problems can result in long-term negative consequences for the affected individuals, their families, their communities, and our Nation as a whole.”

Once a Soldier returns home, there is no “checks and balances list” on how to cope with regular civilian life. Specifically, no one checks or receives updates on a returning Soldier’s mental health status unless that Soldier specifically requests help. This is a huge barrier since the majority of returning Soldiers are men, and historically men avoid mental health care, therapy and medication.

Kyle Bahrs, a 29-year-old Midwest native was married to a two tour Army Sergeant who served in Iraq from 2005 to 2008. "Tim" currently suffers from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in addition to a traumatic brain disorder that left him 70% disabled.

Kyle knew "Tim" before he joined the Army and served in Iraq. “He was ‘normal’. Trivial things didn’t bother him, he was fun.” After returning "Tim" went from a fun loving guy to “a cruel, mean and abusive man.”

"Tim's" life became crippled by his untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and received no mental health care until Kyle insisted, threatening their marriage. Kyle stated “the health care system was completely overbooked, he was rushed, and there were never enough people working.” She continued, “It was completely bureaucratic. It took "Tim" at least two months just to get in to see someone. And when he did they acted like they didn’t give a shit. It was so disheartening because he put his life on the line and didn’t receive any gratitude and the most basic need once a solider returns. Psychological health care.”

While Kyle was married to "Tim", he started drinking excessively and was becoming violent. “He got real paranoid. He wouldn’t answer the door unless he had a gun in his hand.” Then there were the nightmares, “He would wake up screaming…he had dreams and visions of the faces of the people that he killed. I felt helpless. What do you say to that?”

According to the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine on Combat Stress there is a list of mental and physical symptoms before, during and after deployment. I showed Kyle this list and she said that "Tim" displayed practically every single symptom.

Common Stressors to the Deployment Cycle:

Pre-Deployment (from notification to departure)

• Anger and protest
• Emotional detachment
• Family stress
• Marital disagreements

Deployment (from departure to return)

• Emotional destabilization and disorganization
• Sadness, depression, disorientation, anxiety, loneliness
• Sleep disturbances
• Health complaints
• Financial problems
• Some find the midpoint of deployment as the time of greatest stress
• Fear for safety of deployed service member

Reunion

• Apprehension over redefined roles and power dynamics

Post Deployment

• Honeymoon period
• Resentment over loss of independence
• Insecurity about place in reconfigured system
• Service member may have difficulty disengaging from combat mission orientation.
• Domestic violence

Soldier Combat Stress Reaction

Physical

• Trouble falling asleep
• Oversleeping
• Waking up in the middle of the night
• Difficulty with sexual and non sexual intimacy
• Fatigue
• Feeling jumpy
• Being easily started

Emotional

• Feeling overwhelmed
• Depression
• Irritability
• Feeling numb
• Difficulty readjusting to family routines
• Difficulty reconnecting with family
• Discomfort being around other people or in crowds
• Frustration
• Guilt
• Crying

Cognitive

• Difficulty with memory
• Loss of interest/motivation
• Concentration problems
• Difficult talking about deployment experiences
• Loss of trust

(Source: U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine on Combat Stress, Soldier Combat Stress Reaction Brochure)

Steffan, a 40-year old African American Gulf War Veteran, stated that there was no “mental health” process after he returned to the United States. He stated, “mental health wasn’t even an issue that people thought about.” He added that a lot of guys he knew who had problems started drinking to “dull it away”. If someone needed mental health services, they had to initiate it.

It’s easier to ignore a bad situation by depending on alcohol or drugs, especially when that person doesn’t have strong family support.

As a Country that boasts the best military in the world, we have a lot to learn about humans themselves. These issues need be taken seriously by the military, and our government needs to consciously implement statistic-changing policies before we start to see a change in this downward spiral of unnecessary human demise that affects us all.

Send your concerns to the following:

Department of Defense

http://www.defenselink.mil

Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health

5205 Leesburg Pike

Falls Church, Virginia 22041-3258

Read their 2007 Annual Report:

http://www.health.mil/dhb/mhtf/MHTF-Report-Final.pdf

Michelle Simonsen is a victim's rights advocate, crime analyst and blogger for "Michelle Says So", founder of the grassroots consumer boycott, "Boycott Aruba--Justice for Natalee Holloway", an advisory board member of "Survivors in Action", and is a contributing writer for "Now Public", and "True Crime Talk".

From Bondage to Freedom

By Robert L. Carpenter

There is a story in the Old Testament that tells us about the children of Israel while they were in Egypt. There were literally millions of men, women, and children living in Egypt under Pharoah’s rule and reign. Generations of families had been born and died in Egypt.

Egypt was a place of bondage and slavery for the Israelites. Night and day all they did was serve Pharaoh, who was a ruthless, arrogant and selfish dictator. Their life was not their own.

Also, Egypt was a place of depression. Many of the Israelites felt like they would never be able to leave Egypt and it depressed them. Although they knew they did not have to be in Egypt, and although they knew that there was a better place for them somewhere out there, they were manipulated to think that they would always have to remain in Egypt. Consequently, many became depressed.

Egypt was also a place of poverty. Nothing that they earned, which was virtually nothing, was theirs. Pharaoh could, at any given time, take what they had earned and restrict what they could have in their possession. Egypt was a horrible place of overwhelming despair. It was not the place that they were destined to be.

One significant point that I ascertained from this story was that the children of Israel were only a day’s journey from their “Promised Land.” The Promised Land was a place of freedom. The Promised Land was a place of prosperity. The Promised Land was a place of new beginnings, but because the Israelites became comfortable in their discomfort, it took many years before they crossed over into the Promised Land. As a matter of fact, many generations of families died in Egypt and were not even given a proper burial.

There are multiplied millions of women in America who are right now in their own personal Egypt. They are in a place of bondage. They are in a place that they know they aren’t supposed to be. They are in a place of poverty. They are in a state of depression, just like the children of Israel. Their “Pharoah” has convinced them that they cannot have freedom. Their Pharaoh has convinced them that they cannot make it to their “promised land.” Their Pharaoh has told them that their quality of life will not improve. They have been manipulated and forced to believe that there is no way out. They have been told this is the way it is.

However, it only takes a day to change from bondage to freedom. It only takes determination to get out of Egypt. It only takes a revelation of knowing what they deserve in life. It takes a day to move into the Promised Land, which is a place of celebration, newness of life and prosperity.

Time’s up! It’s time to let our women know they don’t have to remain in bondage. Get the kids. Stop the generational cycle. Stop the madness and move from bondage to freedom today!