Are you a mental hoarder and don’t know it. There are useless thoughts and painful memories that need to be sorted out into three categories: save, maybe, and useless. Sometimes we spend more time ruminating about the past and things we can’t change than we do enjoying the present and planning for the future.
What do you think? Are you a hoarder and therefore, there is not much room for current experiences and anticipation of future possibilities. Hoarders in real life don’t get much done and sometimes hoarding can be life threatening.
Their living space becomes dirty and can’t be cleaned. It is difficult to cook, use the bathroom, and find decent clothes to wear. Hoarders don’t often have much company and it is possible for a hoarder to have an accident or mental emergency, and not be able to get any help and die.
The more you keep your mind filled with negative and painful memories, the less room you have for new or current friends and family, the less able you are to develop new strategies to live life successfully, and learn to enjoy what you do have or could have if you weren’t blind sighted by the past.
Just think that you are married and that you have a mother-in-law or father-in-law who doesn’t like you and who can manipulate things so you don’t come out looking so good to the rest of the family and people in the neighbourhood who are neighbours and people you might know from church or other organisations.
This person or persons gets more bank for the buck every time you think about what they did to you and how it affects your relationship with others. Have you ever had a scab or a sore that you couldn’t stop picking at? What did doing that do to the spot? It may have kept it from healing, and if it did eventually heal, it would form a scar. They are so busy attacking you that you do not have a chance to point out their weaknesses. In this case, their defence mechanism from keeping themselves from getting attacked their self is a good offence.
Thinking about these things is what makes them stick. These defences seem initially useful such spouting off about what that person instead of giving a proper burial and going on with you. We have all had past hurts but this is now not then. Forgiveness is a good mind clutter tool, followed by forgetting the incident or incidents, and focusing on making room for new and better memories. If you can’t completely do this, then make some time in your day to think about it and only think about it then. Connections in the brain are strengthened by repetition. Another way to handle something that occupies your brain is to put off worrying about or thinking about something to later when it might be more important to resolve an issue.
Yes, sometimes we occupy our mind with worries so much so that we can’t get on with current projects.
Domestic violence often lets the perpetrator get away with doing it and people may think that the victim probably deserved it and/or it was just a family quarrel. Why then do police officers get killed answering domestic violence calls. How many women, even men, suffer permanent injuries which ought to require hospitalisation and reconstructive surgery and they don’t get it. What about the children that witness this violence even though they don’t get physically hurt themselves. Who learns that it is okay to vent your anger upon another helpless individual when they can’t defend themselves. When you are mad, the only way to handle it is to take it out on someone or something else especially when the source of that anger is not available to take it out on. Imagine someone coming home from work and they are mad about something that happened that day and they pounce on any excuse to take out their anger on.
Domestic violence is not a silly husband and wife quarrel. People like to dismiss this type of violence as it only was no real fight to be worried about because the victims often deny that they were hurt and/or that the perpetrator was or could be violent. Since these people, usually wives and children or sometimes husbands and elderly relatives, have to live in the situation they might not complain as it would only make it worse. They may have no place to go and/or no resources. Police officers, who know how violent these situations can become, may try to pacify the perpetrators and overlook the potentially dangerous behaviour that could exist. People often poo poo domestic violence calls saying why can’t these people solve their own problems or that the victims probably asked for it. In truth, if police officers could show up in riot gear and have a backup, they would probably be a lot safer. Also, you don’t know who is on who’s side. This can be dangerous. Do you think that social workers would or should answer these calls instead of the police? Like in the Stockholm Syndrome. the victims can change sides and defend the preparatory. The relationships
People often poo poo domestic violence calls saying why can’t these people solve their own problems or that the victims probably asked for it. In truth, if police officers could show up in riot gear and have a backup, they would probably be a lot safer. Also, you don’t know who is on who’s side. This can be dangerous. Do you think that social workers would or should answer these calls instead of the police? Like in the Stockholm Syndrome. the victims can change sides and defend the perpetrator.
The home can be a place where violence is born, learned, reinforced, and perpetuated. Yet we often ignore it or mistreat it until it ends in violence and it can be to some person outside the fight that comes to stop it. Actually, we could learn much from the policemen or women who take these calls and the twists and turns that these situations develop when they are in them.
You never know what will happen to you when you enter and try to handle one of these situations. I was a substitute psychiatric aide in a large insane asylum one summer when I was in college. I was in charge of the cafeteria by myself while three wards ate. We were locked in because one of the wards was a locked ward.There was cafeteria help but they would not help me deal with patients. One of the wards I knew, but not the other two. A patient acted up and started slinging mustard and ketchup around and I walked over to her calmly trying to calm her down. I suggested that she ought to go to the bathroom and clean herself up. She suddenly slapped me in the face so hard that I wasn’t sure she hadn’t broken some of my teeth. I was checking myself over when a nurse came into the cafeteria who knew the patient and they walked out together ignoring me. ?
Where does violence begin, where is it reinforced, and often ignored? Yet the histories of violent offenders who kill hapless citizens often start with domestic violence. My cousin, a judge in Northern Illinois, started a special domestic violence diversion court for this. This is going in the right direction. Start with the cause, not the results!
I was recently involved in a conversation where I appeared to be the only woman responding and I sometimes thought that I was invisible and I not only wasn’t seen, I wasn’t heard either. Is this a common experience for other women? I thought the women’s liberation had changed all that or had it?
As a woman in these groups I am often in the minority and not being paid attention to is often unfortunate; but also just plain rude. What happened to lady’s first? Often when a woman gets to make a contribution, the men are often in the process of getting up out of their chairs and leaving the group as much to say that the woman’s comments are not worth staying for and listening to.
For example, if I raise my hand indicating that I wanted to speak next and had something to add to the conversation, another man in the group starts to talk without raising his hand and that I had held my hand up before he started talking is ignored. If I do get to speak. For Heaven’s sake if I can get the floor, I am greeted by impatience from some of the males in the group and may not be able to get my point across before I am interrupted and another person (usually a man) takes over the conversation to refute me.
Recently I saw a contribution on FaceBook that discussed something that was called manspeak and realized I was not alone in the world when it came to being bulldozed this way. What happens also is that men are usually oblivious to what is going on as far as the women in the group are concerned. At the end of church Sunday, I volunteered to give the closing prayer and our minister told me that he thought that a woman had never done that before. Huh? My first experience with a woman’s rights group on my campus was in the late 60’s and we are now in the second decade of the 21st century!
An afterthought, consider the dress codes for women as compared to men in the broadcasting business. Men are covered from wrist to neck and down to the feet. It can be a very forgiving outfit and I notice that this can cover up excess weight fairly well. Men also seem to age gracefully on television. One standard that is also usually kept by men is “neat and clean”. I also have noticed that men usually take a very relaxed position with their legs open.
Now take women they often, but not always, have very high maintenance hairstyles and dresses that are often not usually very modest and therefore, women have to struggle to avoid exposing themselves especially since they usually sit with their legs crossed. Also there seem to be standards for women especially that encourage them to keep their weight down and sometimes has them even resorting to surgery in order to look more youthful.
Now this is easy to observe, but no one usually says anything about this usually on air and pant suits similar to men’s suits are discouraged and sometimes made fun of although I have observed that female elected government officials do frequently wear pants; and not usually, except in Hillary Clinton’s case, made fun of for doing this; but I do notice that sometimes comments about the women’s hairstyles as being unfaltering and unattractive are made in a way that reflects on their ability to do their jobs.
Women? Are we being kept in our place this way by men?
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