ABUSE OR GENDER VIOLENCE
Men assaulting women, women accepting to be mistreated.
Abuse is the result of a relationship between an abuser and an abused. An agreement between two parties, the submissive and the dominant. How to heal this problem from transcendence?
I have experience in treating groups of women abused and raped by their partners, and in all cases I noticed a background of guilt, worthlessness and lack of self-esteem more or less pronounced. When a woman realizes what she, her life, her health and integrity are worth, something magical happens, they wake up to reality and realize they are supporting something that is not for them; at that moment their eyes sparkle and they can make the decision to end any act not corresponding to what they are worth.
I call that moment THE GREAT ESCAPE. Not because they’re escaping from anything, but because they choose to leave the prison without knowing they created it themselves. They are ready to be free.
Abusers, usually men, are really bad in many aspects, especially when it comes to psychological and emotional disorders that they have had for many years. This extremely delicate situation is projected as violence against women. All abuse is a defence mechanism. But beyond seeking any justifications, or judging them without any understanding, I want to give a view on this matter as I had the opportunity to work in group therapy with many mistreated women. I have no experience in treating abusers, so I can’t say much about them. They never seek help because they are in a place of false power, with improperly acquired rights, such as the use of violence.
HEALING IS A TRANSCENDENCE PROCESS
It’s really important to raise consciousness in order to be able to heal, resolve or overcome the problems we are facing. From the moment we wake our consciousness up, we have no other choice but to start detecting, day by day, everything that block, trap, enslave or make us suffer; from that moment, we can improve ourselves and become strong when it comes to facing it, and put ourselves over the power that the conditioning had over us.
Let us clarify that “conditioning” are the programmed and pre-set limits imposed on us as a protection, but operating as barrier to a happy life.
One of these strong conditionings is submission. The order to be submitted to others. Then when we suffer from it, we have no better idea than blaming the dominant ones for the damage they do to us. An attitude that denotes an unhealthy state of the person accusing the other.
Personal empowerment can’t be done in relation to others but in relation to our inner part accepting to be submissive; dominated, subjugated and controlled by others. The other enslaving us is the least important part in solving the problem. Each one should take over his own life and situation, looking within himself why he endures unworthy acts from the outside. When a human being reaches these imbalanced parts of himself, he can start to see other reasons why he has been mistreated.
Transcendence happens “within” ourselves, and it’s “one’s own” responsibility.
The first thing is to transcend the outside. Regarding this, the different defence mechanisms are those not allowing us to focus on ourselves, because they keep our attention outwards. For example, projection, rationalization, explanation, justification, attacks, denial, escape, are different mechanisms we use to defend ourselves from the outside, to give others what belongs to us, so we don’t have to accept our own sickness. We note, judge, criticize and we search for the causes on the outside instead of looking inward.
A very current and, at the same time, hard example when it comes to domestic violence acts occurring daily in the world, is the debate in Spain about how to define the act in which a man kills his wife. When this happens, some claim: “A woman was killed by her partner” others argue that we should change the message and say, “A man has taken the life of a woman” and others say you need to change a few more words to be precise in what is defined: “A man murdered a woman.” This would be a very realistic and powerful statement.
From the point of view of the “Transcendent Healing”, none of these statements are true, especially from the point of view we are developing in this article about transcendence of the other. We could say: “The submissive and unresolved part of a woman allowed a man to kill her“; it would be much harder to say, “The submissive and not healed part of a woman murdered her.” The problem with this way of saying is that it puts the responsibility over a large part or 100% of women, for the fact that, knowing what could happen, they didn’t go away or ask for help.
Part of the underlying problem in gender violence is that women feel they deserve such abuse, and are not worthy to get out. There is a book titled: “My husband beats me, normal” that reflects the reality that many women already assume they should be mistreated. It is obvious they are kidnapped by their own conditioning. If the focus is only on attacking the aggressor, we will not solve anything, and evidence shows that very little progress has been made in preventing more deaths. How would that be if women took charge of the fact they endure and don’t report it…?
If women strictly focused on themselves, it would solve the problem immediately. But both them and government campaigns focus on ending with the abuser. They believe that if dogs die, rabies ends. It’s unfortunately not the case, it would be great if it could be.
The bad news of this article is that the other shouldn’t be blamed for everything bad happening to us. But that we are a complicit part. We should never forget that every problem not addressed with the sense of responsibility will not find a real and permanent solution.
In the case of domestic violence, I’m not talking about who is to blame in abuse, but about responsibilities. Actually, all gender abuse is a shared responsibility, one part is passive, the enduring; and the other party is active, the mistreating. It is a two-sided phenomenon.
This example can serve for many situations. We spend our time getting out of the way when it comes to determining responsibilities. If you ask anyone why you haven’t done what you had or how you had to do something? You’ll meet a range of possibilities of the use of defence mechanisms. But you will hardly meet someone saying: “That’s my responsibility, because I have not taken over.”
We are facing many social issues on which we should raise the degree of direct or indirect involvement we have. Terrorism. Exploitation. Abuse. Poverty and hunger. They are nothing more than manifestations of our own unresolved misery.
(Extracts from one of the book written by Alberto José Varela in Valdemoro prison, Madrid)
Alberto Varela
Creator of the Transcendent Healing Program