Triggers and Relationships

Triggers and Relationships 

A compassionate, cooperative and loving approach.

An emotional trigger is said to have occurred when someone appears to have a disproportionate emotional response to an external event. 

The essence of a trigger is the triggered person's amygdala pattern-matching the current event with the stored pattern of a previous painful experience and recalling the emotions of the original event as though it were happening again, right now. 

For clarity, the triggered person is NOT really reacting to the current external event but reliving a past painful experience; it is internal to them and genuinely not about you; this is not just some trite platitude. 

Example. She says or does something innocent that pattern-matches an interaction between his mom and dad that he witnessed thirty years ago that caused him to believe that he was a bad boy and thus they divorced and abandoned him and it was all his fault. His emotions at the time included unworthiness, guilt, shame, terror, anger, resentment, defiance; the whole gamut of 'bad stuff'.

When he is triggered, in that moment, she is not dealing with a thirty-five-year-old account executive, she is dealing with a terrified and ashamed five-year-old boy who sees his essential love and support mechanism being stripped from him because he is bad, or inadequate. 

Inappropriate emotional response? Really? 

Well, yes, from the point of view of reality but he's not in reality in the present moment; he's reliving an historic fantasy. 

So, what is the solution? Getting angry at him and shaming his bad behavior? Actually replaying the historical event in the present? 

Her getting frightened, angry and disappointed at this apparently grown man behaving like a child is natural and understandable and may even trigger her. 

!!!BOOM!!! 

Now we really have an out-of-control situation. 

The answer to all problems is, of course, love. 

At some point, both will have calmed down enough for the core issues to be resolved if the parties are willing. 

Let's see what we know:

1. He doesn't deserve to be triggered. 

2. She doesn't deserve him to be triggered. 

3. She doesn't deserve to be triggered (if she is). 

4. He literally couldn't have behaved differently in that moment. 

5. She literally couldn't have behaved differently in that moment. 

6. He doesn't deserve to be shamed for his behavior. 

7. She doesn't deserve to be shamed for her behavior. 

8. He will continue to behave in this manner until his core issue is addressed. 

9. She will continue to respond to his behavior in this manner until HIS core issue is addressed. 

10. She will continue to respond to his behavior in this manner until HER core issue is addressed. 

11. Suppression is not a solution. 

12. Avoidance is not a solution. 

13. If a solution is not found the relationship will suffer. 

14. If a solution is not sought it will not be found. 

15. With love, anything is possible. 

If both parties commit to each other, the relationship, and working together to find a solution, this creates the space for magic to happen. 

There is no formula; just the commitment to open and honest communication towards a mutually beneficial solution.

Use as non-judgmental language as you are capable of and take ownership and responsibility for your own behaviours and feelings and act with both compassion for yourself and for the other person. 

You own your feelings and emotions. If you were entirely on your own on a mountain top you would still have feelings and emotions. They are yours. You generate them. You own them. You are responsible for them. 

We habitually say things like, "You MADE me feel… " without realizing that that is impossible. 

Emotions are now known to comprise peptides manufactured within YOUR body, released into YOUR bloodstream, and received and interpreted by YOUR brain. How did thy MAKE your organs produce peptides? Did she reach inside you with her hand and squeeze your liver? 

You can come up with a de-escalation plan for when one or the other recognises a trigger. 

Can you visualize how powerful a compassionately asked question like, "Are you feeling triggered right now?" would be? How long could trauma last in the face of such love? 

How about, "Forgive me. I think I'm triggered right now?"

Love is the answer! 

Best Workout Ever

I recently signed up for the 40+ fitness package shown in the screenshot and today I had my best workout ever, though possibly not in the way you think. I stunk, and it was great. 

Funk Roberts, our program coach, firmly makes the point that mindset is king and that it is important to know our why, to keep us motivated. 

I'm 66 and my 'why' includes looking and feeling good for the next 40 years rather than a slow, miserable decline over the next 20.

Today was day #3 of the program with day #1 being the first full HIIT workout and day #2 being either a rest day or Yoga, and I chose Yoga. 

I felt like shit today; I had no energy and my muscles were suing for divorce, but I fired up his 'follow along' video, determined to do my best. 

The clue to understanding this article is in the phrase 'determined to do my best'. 

The workout was called 'Crazy Eights' and consisted of eight sets of eight reps of five bodyweight exercises performed back-to-back with no rests. 

So! How did I do? Using conventional metrics, I stunk! I performed set #1 OK(ish); I completed set #2 though much slower than Funk; then I gave up. 

It didn't end there because by set #5 I had my breath back and joined in again, though, once again, more slowly. 

After another short break I joined in for part of set #7 before calling it a day. 

Pretty dismal, eh!? 

Imagine my surprise when I found myself walking up and down for my warm-down with a big smile on my face. Trust me, I was surprised. 

You see, for a while now I've been working on the relationship between my masculine energy and my feminine energy and it appears that today was the first demonstrative sign of progress. 

"Through a poor work-out?" I hear you ask. Well, kind of, yes. Let me explain. 

I signed up for this exercise course to improve my health and fitness, lose the belly fat and gain some lean muscle, and it uses Testosterone levels as the metric. Masculinity, right!? 

Well, plans and performance targets are masculine energy and in purely masculine energy terms today's performance was poor, but execution, listening to your body, and feelings are feminine energy. 

I. Did. My. Best. 

Not my best ever; certainly not as well as some others on the same program; and certainly not as well as possible for any human ever. But, my best, under the circumstances this morning, with the physical and mental resources available to me this morning. 

It is literally not possible to improve on that. 

Imagine I was driving a 1.2L Nissan Micra; what's its top speed? Google says 106mph/170kph. If I set a target of driving at 150mph/240kph how should I feel if I 'failed' and 'only' hit 106mph/140kph?

Pretty good, I would think. 

Was this as fast as when I drove a BMW? No!?

Was this as fast as that other guy in the Ferrari? No!?

Was this as fast as last year's F1 champion? Again, no!?

The fact that I got the maximum speed possible out of the Micra is impressive, regardless of the number representing that speed. 

My success was ORDINAL, not CARDINAL. 

This is just a wimp's excuse for poor performance, right!? NO! Absolutely not! 

I know I did my best under the circumstances because I was in the British Army for ten years and know what it is to try; try as hard as you can; to avoid jail due to the Sergeant's displeasure. I tried that hard. 

I realized later that my post-workout smile was due to having honoured my FEELINGS, a feminine energy metric, rather than a number, a masculine energy metric, and wasn't my 'why' about how I feel? 

If I honoured the masculine energy metric I would probably have felt like a failure, and, to be honest, that's what I expected to feel with those numbers, and that negative feeling would make it less likely that I would continue and, thus, succeed. 

By honouring the feminine energy metric of feeling good I not only tried as hard as I could but felt good as well. 

I am almost GUARANTEED to succeed if I keep on showing up and trying my hardest, aren't I? 

The moral of this story is that I am most likely to achieve my masculine targets by using feminine metrics. 

Using masculine metrics for my masculine targets would likely result in feelings of performance dissatisfaction leading to failure. 

Using purely feminine metrics of feeling good would likely mean never even starting. 

But together? They do say that behind every good man is a good woman. 😉

Onwards and upwards. 

You are the only thought in the mind of God

"Don't be ridiculous. God probably doesn't even know I exist," I hear you say. "Au contraire, mon Amie," for the briefest of moments, you are the only thing that exists, the only thought in God's mind. Let me explain. 

TV and video, moving pictures, don't really move, as you probably know. What we perceive as moving images is really a series of still images flashed before our eyes sufficiently quickly to appear as continuous movement to our brains. I believe that anything above 30 Frames Per Second (FPS) is sufficient. 

A computer works in a somewhat similar manner; a Von Neumann machine; sequentially processing one 'instruction' at a time and, thus, changing the state of the whole machine each processor 'tick'. 

Lost? Imagine you are in your kitchen about to bake a cake. The first 'instruction' might be, "Get 200g flour. So, the state of your kitchen work-surface changes from empty to having 200g of flour on it. Each step of the recipe will change the state of your kitchen and you could film it, one frame at a time. 

You can only think one thought at a time. You might think that you can think of several things at once, but you can't. Go ahead, think of an elephant and think of a giraffe. 

Maybe you can visualize both of them standing next to each other but that's not what I mean. You can think of the elephant, then, you stop thinking about the elephant and think about the giraffe, and you switch back and forth between them.

It's much easier to do this in words. To describe them walking you would say something like, "the elephant lifts it's front right leg and the giraffe places it's left rear leg down." These are separate actions. First you described what the elephant did then, you stopped describing the elephant and described the giraffe. 

So, what if God describes a small State change for you, then describes a small state change for me, then describes a small state change for John, then describes a small state change for Mary, then describes a small state change for... until everything in the Universe is processed, then He goes back and does it all again, Ad infinitum, so fast that we can't (yet) detect it? 

This is not ridiculous or outlandish, some quantum physicists already think something similar. 

So, as I said earlier, for one Universal 'frame' the only thing that occupies God's attention, the only thing on God's mind, is YOU. For one brief period, you have God's undivided attention. 

Use your time-slice well. 

Love and peace!

Where is God?

Where is God? 

So, does God exist? 

Exist!? 

What is existence, anyways? 

Things in the world of sensation are said to exist. 

>Things<

Things that can be experienced through the five senses. Seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched. Existence then is the world of things. So can God be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched?

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was convincing men he doesn't exist."This saying is popularly taken to mean that the devil hid himself from us such that we doubt that the devil exists. 

What if it doesn't mean that? 

What if there is a capital missing? 

What if THE capital is missing? 

What if it should be understood as: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was convincing men He doesn't exist"?

So, who convinced men that He doesn't exist? 

Men, that's who...

You!?

Me!?

You doubt God exists or you wouldn't be reading this. Maybe, up to now, we have been the devil's advocate. 

Hmmmm!

Have you ever looked everywhere for the keys in your hand? Have you ever looked everywhere for the keys that were right there in front of you on the coffee table all the time? Hidden, in plain sight!? I know I have. 

When we can't find something we are looking where it's not, not where it actually is. 

Maybe, just maybe, if we walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror we would see Him or Her. 

God is THE all-powerful creator. 

What if I AM a powerful creator? 

What if we are powerful creators? 

What if we are ALL powerful co-creators with God? 

What have we created up to now? 

Heaven on Earth for all? 

Maybe not. 

If I were God, what would be different? 

If you were God, what would be different? 

If we can't prove that we are not God, and we can't, we might be God.

What kind of God's do we want to be? 

Can we risk not being loving Gods? 

Evil? 

Or would we want compassionate, caring, forgiving, merciful, nurturing Gods?

But, is it just me, is it just you, or is everyone God?

Everyone, I hear you scoff. 

Yes! We are ALL capable of evil. Not acting evil is a matter of choice. Of freewill. 

Can we risk offending others if they too are God(s)?

What should God-to-God relationships look like?

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? 

Hmmmm! 

Copyright Notice 

This is an original article by Graham Gambier 

All rights reserved. 

How Does the Western Terror Response Work?

I apologise in advance for my lack of comprehension. It seems that everyone gets this but me. This is a genuine request for enlightenment on an issue of vital importance to all of us.

The Western narrative goes something like:

They attacked us so our security forces must mount a vigorous armed response.

This could be re-written as:

They bombed us so we must bomb them back.

or

Us: We are going to bomb you until the bombing stops.
Them: We are going to bomb you until the bombing stops.

or

Us or them: Bombing us is evil and wrong so we are going to bomb you.

Here is the bit that I don't understand:
How does any of the above stop the bombing?
What am I missing?



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The June 2017 London Terror Attack

Following the outrage in Manchester, where my partner Laura's nephew and partner live, we now have an outrage in London, where my son and his partner live.

What on earth would persuade human beings to behave in such a manner? It is clear to all right-thinking people that acts such as these will not force or frighten Britains into giving in or running away. In fact, they are almost guaranteed to produce a violent response from us.

I have heartfelt sympathy for the families, friends, and co-workers of the victims of this latest attack (and previous attacks, both here and elsewhere) and fellowship with all those who are outraged at this news.

I was tempted to respond to my opening question 'What on earth would persuade human beings to behave in such a manner?' with the angry response, "They are not humans, they are animals." But are they? Are they not humans? Do animals behave like this? Surely, animals kill for food, or in direct self-defense, not like this. So are they humans then, after all?

If this behaviour is uniquely human, and I am a human, would I behave differently under the same circumstances?

We rarely get to hear what the circumstances of another's life are in any detail. I don't even know all the circumstances of my own childrens' lives in detail. Hell, I'm not even sure of all the details of my own life, let alone the details of the 'terrorists'' lives. All we get to hear about the circumstances of a horrific attack such as this are a few trite phrases trotted out in the media, coupled with the emphatic assertion that the perpetrators are/were terrorists, 'bad' people.

Then I recall the phrase, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter?"

I propose a test. A science experiment. A test that will help determine if these horrific acts are those of 'bad' people, bad apples if you will, or just the acts of people, people like you and me. The acts of humans.

If they are, indeed, 'bad apples', then no amount of understanding their motivations, or their life circumstances, or their environment, or their collective history will make me say, "I would act the same under these circumstances."

If, however, after becoming aware of ALL the facts (or as many as is possible) I admit that maybe, just maybe, I would be tempted to act similarly, then I must ask myself, "What would make ME act in this deplorable manner?" What would make me the terrorist?

I confess that my instant response, my snap judgement would be to slaughter the person, friends, families, and anybody who had even looked at the person who brutally harmed 'one of mine', unspeakable things that could be done to my precious daughter for example. And I would call this 'justice'.

If such justice works, if it is effective, then history will be littered with examples that prove that violence solves violence. But, it appears that history is not so forthcoming.

I contend that history shows that violence always begets more violence. Never-ending, escalating violence. Centuries-long unresolved grudges that occasionally erupt in further, unexpected violence. That those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

Albert Einstein famously said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

So, what could I do differently to resolve the terrorist problem?

To solve a problem one must understand the problem.

If one understands a problem, one might devise a solution, but, conversely, if one does not understand the problem, any 'solution' is accidental, at best.

The West has clearly not found an effective solution to the 'terrorist problem', so, more of the same is clearly not the way to continue.

Let's go back and re-analyse the problem.

My starting point is, "What would make me act in this manner?" and, therefore, "what would make me stop, and stop my family, friends, countrymen, or co-religionists seeking vengeance?"
This, surely, is the way to an effective, long-lasting solution.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Some Thoughts on Restitution in a Free Society by graham gambier

Restitution

Some thoughts on restitution in a free society

In online discussions I have had where restitution has been mentioned as an appropriate response to acts of aggression, correspondents first deny that you can place a monetary value on acts of violence against the person, then they point out that, even if you could, a wealthy man would find any fixed scale of monetary restitution relatively less onerous to pay than a poor man would, and that this is inherently unfair.

Another objection correspondents raise is the paltry sum a victim might receive if the perpetrator was only able to afford, say, $10 per week.

Having read libertarian literature on this subject, I am persuaded that restitution is a more appropriate response to violence than retribution and, while not original, my response goes something like:

Protection policies will likely be insurance based where the purchaser decides on a level of cover, so will chose values acceptable to themselves for various events such as rape, assault, murder etc.. I cannot predict what the market might choose as appropriate restitution for e.g. rape, that will be a process of market discovery. That is part of the beauty and strength of markets as opposed to command systems. 

It is the insurer who is likely to pay out to the victim, the level of compensation pre-chosen and paid for by the victim, not the perpetrator, leaving the insurer to recover what costs it can from the perpetrator. 

To the extent that insurers can recover costs from perpetrators, policy premiums will be lower than they would be otherwise. 

Where customers choose retribution based policies, the insurer will recover fewer costs if the perpetrator is incarcerated or killed and will bear the additional cost of any incarceration, so premiums will be higher than they would otherwise. 

Because of the above, let's suppose that retribution based policy premiums are twice that of restitution based policy premiums (who knows what the actual multiple would be?). Purchasers would face the decision, "Do I receive X compensation for Y premium with the perpetrator working to pay for his crime literally, or do I receive the same X compensation but for 2Y premium because the perpetrator is locked up (or X/2 compensation for Y premium)?" Individuals will make this choice for themselves. 

Any of us could face being found guilty of aggression against persons or property at some point and will face the consequences of the market choice between restitution and retribution based protection policies if we are. Which would you rather face, restitution, or retribution? How would your preference for treatment as a perpetrator colour your market choice as a victim? Do unto others etc..

A point that has only recently occurred to me, and has not yet made it into the above, is that any decision to purchase a restitution or retribution based policy will likely be made in cold blood, and at a time when finance is comparatively more important than vengeance. After a person has become a victim of violence it may well be that vengeance is uppermost in their mind, but, likely as not, this will not be when their purchasing decision is made.

But the problem of the relative ease with which a wealthy man might discharge his debt to his victim still bothers me.

An unrelated post proposed that, (ignoring state welfare payments) as income comes from labour, a given sum of your money could be said to represent that portion of your life spent earning it.

That got me thinking about the potentially unfair restitution problem.

Theoretically, our current retribution based response to say, rape, would be to incarcerate both the wealthy man and the poor man for an equal period (we all know how the wealthy receive equal treatment to the poor in adversarial state courts, right?).

However, if they did receive equal time for the same crime, the loss of earnings for the wealthy man would likely exceed that of the poor man.

So, perhaps, instead of a monetary scale becoming the market price for a given aggression against a person, a time-based scale could become the norm instead.

If you think about it, this has a concordance with retribution based justice in that, say, a rapist could pay the equivalent of ten years income while a murderer might pay the equivalent of twenty years income.

Then, another thought occurred to me. As mentioned above, protection policy premiums will be affected by the insurer's ability to recover costs from perpetrators, and, as most people will be paying protection policy premiums you could argue that any inability by insurers to recover costs from perpetrators is a societal cost (yes, that phrase makes me wince too).

Total case costs for the insurer will comprise their costs of detection, evidence gathering etc., and case preparation and presentation costs, plus any restitution payment to their customer (or their estate). Therefore, total premiums will comprise the insurer's general administration costs and any unrecovered total case costs.

Under a time-based restitution system insurers might be able to recover moneys from some perpetrators in excess of total case costs and these moneys could be applied to reduce premiums for all, so, not only would the playing field be levelled, away from the wealthy, but ‘society’ would benefit too.

There may be an additional advantage to such a system. Even under an inherently more fair free-market restitution based justice system (if you will forgive the term, system), the wealthy are still likely to afford higher standards of protection than the poor, and, as higher premiums afford higher quality advocates, this creates a disincentive to insurers of poor victims pursuing wealthy perpetrators. If, however, their revenue from pursuing a wealthy perpetrator enables them to afford a higher cost advocate to handle the case, then the scales of justice might not be tipped so far in favour of the wealthy perpetrator.

I have nothing at all against the wealthy (I wish I was amongst their number), and I harbour no feelings of resentment or thoughts of entitlement to the same goods and services that are available to them in any other field than justice. The very word justice connotes that all human beings are equal and in this field, and this field alone, a wealthy man must not be permitted to gain the advantage.

I am not a scholar, an intellectual, or a philosopher, and, while there may be valid moral or philosophical arguments against such a suggestion as this (and they would be of interest to me), I must remind critics that any free society will not be governed by intellectuals (it won’t be governed, period), it will run itself strictly according to the dictates of the market. It is not theorists, therefore, that will approve such a scheme as this, but ordinary people, unskilled and unschooled in libertarian thought, who will purchase such a product from an entrepreneur (should it be offered) and they see fit.

If this idea is not original I apologise to its developer and state sincerely that I have not come across it elsewhere.


graham gambier