IT’S ABOUT TIME! TREATMENT IS A BETTER SOLUTION THAN WE IMAGINE!

14Jun2011 By Judith Barr

With all the very real distress Congressman Anthony Weiner has created and is creating . . . there are actually some gifts if we would open them, and if we could see them as gifts.

Imagine! We are seeing more and more just how much wounding there is in our country and our world related to our sexuality . . . not only in Anthony Weiner but in our country and our world! Treatment is a better solution than we imagine!

Imagine! We are knowing more clearly still how profoundly people misuse and abuse their power . . . not only Anthony Weiner, but all of us. Treatment is a better solution than we imagine!

Imagine letting yourself take in how much people fight against the truth in every way they can – with distraction, diversion, confrontation, arrogance, denial, repression, and outright lying. . . . not only Anthony Weiner, but everyone. It’s become part of our culture. Treatment is a better solution than we imagine!

Imagine if people could see that real treatment – the kind of therapy that can help us heal to the root – is not just for someone who has done something destructive that makes the front pages, but is something for all our leaders! Imagine if all our leaders were required to have done a major part of their own therapy before becoming a leader! Treatment is a better solution than we imagine!

And what about our citizens? For we all have wounds that are creating more suffering and more wounds in our lives, in those around us, and in our world. Treatment is a better solution than we imagine!

Imagine if we all did our own inner healing work . . . what a different world we would create together!

WHAT DO LYING AND SEX SCANDALS REALLY MEAN – IN ELECTION SEASON AND EVERYDAY?

07Jun2011 By Judith Barr

DSK, Arnold Scwarzenager, The Egyptian Banker, John Edwards again, and now Anthony Weiner . . . all within a month’s time. Do we have any idea what this means?

Misuse and abuse of sexuality is a red flag for the woundedness of our sexuality in this world we live in. Lying about it is a red flag for the wounded integrity in this world we live in. The wounded integrity and the broken trust. Being a leader who does both is a sign of the woundedness not only in the public but also in the leadership of our world.

We all have wounds to heal. The dearth of “good” leadership in our world is not due to people who are leaders having wounds. It is due to people who are leaders not working with their wounds to heal them to the root. When are we going to insist our leaders do their inner healing work? Apologizing is not enough. Resigning is not enough. Being investigated and tried isn’t enough. Having to experience the consequences of their actions is not enough all by itself.

When are we going to insist? When are we going to do our own inner healing work so that our insistence has real meaning . . . and integrity and trustworthiness?

THE POWER OF A PENIS

20May2011 By Judith Barr

As someone with the deep intention of helping us to heal the misuse and abuse of power in our world and the wounding from which that abuse comes . . . I know only too well that we all have the potential to misuse and abuse our power. We all have wounds, some from our experience in our families and some from our experience in our communities, our culture, our world. One of our responses to the deep, intense, raw, painful feelings from our wounds, is to misuse and abuse the power we have . . . or to misuse and abuse in order to feel like we can grab some power from the places we have felt and perhaps still feel powerless. And who amongst us hasn’t felt powerless? Who amongst us hasn’t felt powerless as we were born? Who amongst us didn’t feel powerless as an infant? A baby? A child?

I know only too well that we all have the potential to misuse and abuse our power – men and women alike. Men and women of all ages, races, classes, sexual preferences, spiritual traditions.

At different times in my speaking, teaching, and writing about the issues of power and wounding, I focus on different aspects and different people who misuse and abuse their power. I have published an audio cassette about women abusing their power. I have led workshops about how people misuse their power with money. I have done individual sessions with both men and women related to how power was abused with them when they were children, and how they have misused or abused their power in response. And more.

Recently I wrote a post about the horrible treatment of women in our world, pinpointing some bills in Congress (bills supported by both men and women) that would be harmful to women in our country. Although it encompasses much more, the following post also has as part of its theme the abuse of power often directed at the women in our world..

I simply want you to know before you read today’s post that my scope is large. My work is with everyone, men and women. Although I have written much about the abuse of women by men, I know that women abuse their power, too, sometimes in blatant ways, often in subtle ways, and I do not want to give the impression that I have any bias against men. And I also want you to know that I will also be covering the feminine abuse of power in future posts in their own right timing and connection with events in our world.

If you have a penis and cannot use the power of your penis with respect for both you and everyone else . . . then how can you be trusted to use other power well?

Saturday, May 14, 2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, allegedly physically and sexually attacked a maid at a midtown Manhattan hotel. He was mayor of Sarcelles. He was planning on running for President of France in 2012. He held positions of great power.

But we could ask the same question of many others who have held positions of great power – including Senator John Ensign, former President Bill Clinton, Senator John Edwards, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (who all had affairs, hid them, and lied about them), and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (accused of paying for sex with an underage prostitute and then trying to cover it up through abuse of power).

Women misuse their power, too! Our focus right now, though, is on abuses we see directed at women, in a world where women are often treated so horribly and often still denied power . . . In a world where attempts to escalate the denial of power – the powerlessness – of women abound . . . In a world where the patriarchy is not only firmly entrenched (in the minds and hearts of men and women alike) . . . but also in a world where efforts to reinstate and re-strengthen the patriarchy are underway in this very moment . . .

In a world where all of this is sadly, tragically normalized . . .

Today we will concentrate on this. . .

If you have a penis and cannot use the power of your penis with respect for both yourself and also everyone else . . . then how can you be trusted to use other power well?

The power of your physical strength. The power of your mind. The power of your position – in your family, in your place of work, in your leadership in and out of government. The power of money – in your individual life and in any group in which you have the power to utilize money and make decisions about money. The power of the law – on the street, at the police station, in court, in lawmaking bodies, in executive bodies. The power of the truth. And yes, even the power of love.

We all need to ask ourselves these questions.
Those of us who have a penis and do not use our power well.
Those of us who have a penis and, although we use the power of our penis well, we have thoughts and feelings in which we don’t – thoughts and feelings that are signs to us of something needing to be healed.
Those of us who don’t have penises and misuse our power, too – perhaps in relation to adult men who have penises; perhaps in relation to male babies and children; perhaps in relation to other females.
And those of us who don’t have penises and need to discern who to trust and who not to trust.

We have a lot of work to do . . . Will you do your part?

© Judith Barr, 2011

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE WOMEN?

09May2011 By Judith Barr

We have been hearing, especially lately, so much about the destructive attitude towards and treatment of women in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa . . . among other places. We have been learning about the inhumane treatment and the torture of women in these places . . . and more. They are treated like possessions of the men in their lives and in their society. They are sold into marriage by family. They are not allowed to divorce. In effect, they are trapped. They are tortured if they disobey — anywhere from acid thrown at them, being stoned or killed some other way, or raped and beaten at home. Some even have their clitoris destroyed (female genital mutilation) to deprive them of pleasure and their right to pleasure! And to show them “who has the power.” We have been told, even in the news, how poorly treated women abroad are.

But who’s telling us of the destructive attitude towards and treatment of women right here in the United States of America? Who’s telling us of the inhumane treatment of women right here at home? Who’s aware of the torture women experience in our “civilized” country already, with attempts to expand that torturous experience?

There have been escalating attempts to deprive women of the right to choose what happens to them – physically, emotionally, financially, and health-wise – under the guise of protecting life. *
There was recently an attempt in our House of Representatives to redefine rape – limiting it to forcible rape and excluding date rape, statutory rape, the rape of a woman who has been drugged, the rape of a mentally incompetent woman, the rape of a woman who “gives in” in order to avoid being killed by her attacker, and the cases of incest who are not minors . . . under the twin guises of protecting life and our economy.
And now a bill was just passed in the House (and will go to the Senate) that does not allow government funds to be used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or when a woman’s life is in danger. But . . . small businesses and individual women who themselves buy insurance that covers abortions will have imposed on them tax penalties. Perhaps the worst penalty for women who survive rape and incest and seek abortion care will be that they have to provide proof to IRS investigators of their assault. It’s not torturous enough to be assaulted the first time. It’s not traumatic enough to have to relive the assault when reporting it to the police and going through a court proceeding. There is no excuse for adding the inhumane torture of having to live through it a third time with an IRS investigator. This, once again, under the guise of protecting life and our economy.

What is really happening is that there is a backlash in our country against the empowerment of women that has been growing for decades. Certainly at least since 1919 when the 19th amendment was passed legalizing women’s right to vote; and then growing still in 1973 when Roe v Wade was decided, giving women the right to make choices about their own bodies in a new way. This backlash is an extreme misuse of power by those scared of the power of women. And believe it or not, those scared of the power of women are not only men; they include women themselves. **

How could this be?

I invite you to honestly look at yourself. If you are a man, do you prefer to have the power, rather than share it equally with a woman? Do you have unresolved, unconscious feelings of powerlessness from early, primal experience with the first woman in your life, your mother? Feelings that beneath your awareness feed your wanting to be the powerful one in relation to women? If you’re a woman, are you somehow, out of your early wounds, stuck idealizing men who have power over you? Or ceding your rightful power to them? If you are a woman, do you know in the marrow of your bones and the substance of your soul the experience of being devalued, disempowered, objectified, belittled, and more in a society that is still struggling with its relationship with women and the feminine? Do you take for granted the rights you and other women fought so hard for? Do you disconnect from your innate power as technology seems to offer you a gift – to use a pill to avoid going through the monthly cycle of menstruation? Have you lost all touch with the true power of that time?

Who is going to help women now? What are we going to do about this? We women who feel the agony of it? And the men who support women and women’s causes, who have watched their mothers and sisters and wives and daughters suffer, and who have come to understand?

Look within for your own growth and healing. Look within for the future of women. Look within for the future of our society and our world! For without women being equal, empowered partners in our world, the future is at risk. And then take actions – inside and out – that help to heal us all.

* Although I do use words such as abortion and pro life in this post, that is not what this post is about. This post is about the destructive treatment of women not only abroad but also here in America, both out in the open and also under the guise of other things!

** To learn more about my work with Women’s Mysteries, click here.

JUSTICE?

04May2011 By Judith Barr

Osama Bin Laden was killed by the U.S. Navy Seals in Pakistan Sunday night. Many see the responses of U.S. citizens as natural.
Celebrations. Relief. Hatred fulfilled. Claims of justice.

Political concerns aside. Safety concerns aside. . .
A mixture of many responses.
Most media people I’ve heard have claimed it was justice.
Some have acknowledged their rage.
Some have called him the most hated man on the face of the earth.

Although he needed to be stopped . . .
although there may have been no other way to stop him . . .
although there may have been no other way to capture him . . .
sometimes, sadly, killing is the only option for protecting ourselves.
When animals in the wild kill for protection,
they have no negative intention accompanying their action.

But . . . we humans too often do.

Even though sometimes people aren’t satisfied until a ‘wrong-doer” is killed,
killing is never a matter of justice.
What kind of justice is it to kill someone?
What does it say about us if we call “justice”?
what is really revenge, getting someone back, getting even, avenging?
What does it say about us individually and culturally?
What does it say about our need to grow and develop ourselves into something more?
Into something more matured?
What does it say about our need to discover what justice really means?

How did you feel when you heard the news?
And what can you learn about yourself from how you felt?

Pastor Terry Jones – One Person Can Affect The Entire World . . . Even If We Never Know How

17Apr2011 By Judith Barr

Since the beginning of my training as a psychotherapist, and maybe before, I’ve known that one person can change the world. One person’s actions, but also one person’s thoughts and feelings. That person’s own immediate world built in and around him or her. That person’s extended world of relatives, coworkers, and everyone he or she comes into contact with through a day or a week. And on and on and on into society and our world.

A clear, destructive, and dangerous example of this occurred on March 21, 2011, when Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida – the same Terry Jones who threatened to hold an International Burn A Koran Day on September 11, 2010, and then after the world response said he would not go through with it – carried out his threat to burn a copy of The Koran, the holy book of Islam. Jones held a mock trial, execution and burning of the Koran, with 30 people witnessing. He claimed the holy text of Islam was guilty of crimes.

Terry Jones’ took the action he took . . . “the consequences be damned.” His action has caused more damage than perhaps we will ever know. Certainly we do know that after he burned the Koran, 12 United Nations workers in Afghanistan were killed by demonstrators protesting Jones’ action. Nine other people were killed and 90 injured in a separate demonstration in Kabul.

Terry Jones’ behavior and all the rhetoric around it were filled with prejudice. Prejudice he learned and developed where in his early life? But it was also filled with more. What wounding in his own life was Pastor Jones acting out? Who hated Terry as a little one? Who declared him as just a tiny boy “guilty of crimes”? Who held a mock trial for little Terry Jones? Who threatened to burn him as a child? Literally or figuratively? Who gave him a chance to defend himself, but when he was unable did something violent to him . . . as violent as burning his sacred self? Who acted out the hate and fear and woundedness of their own childhood(s) on Terry Jones many long years ago? And what were the consequences on Terry and others in that person’s world? And now this is the consequence on the Koran, the world’s Muslims, our country, and our world!

We are all sacred. Wound one of us and that wounding gets passed on again and again, from generation to generation . . . until someone says ‘enough’ and does his or her own healing to the root. Until we all say ‘enough’ and do our own healing to the root!

THE POWER OF TOGETHER . . .

14Feb2011 By Judith Barr

There are many lenses through which we need to look at Egypt in this era . . . and we do need to look. Many of them are very deep and complex. Although it’s impossible to do them all at once, today I offer this wondrous and more simple view:

There’s a beautiful children’s book by Leo Lionni.* In French the book is called Nageot, in English, Swimmy. In the story, there is a school of tiny red fish, with one black brother, Nageot. One day everyone in the school except Nageot is eaten by a big fish. Nageot, sad and scared, goes on his way through the sea, having new adventures. One day, he sees a school of tiny red fish, similar to those with whom he originally swam. He invites them to go on adventures with him, but they are too frightened . . . the big fish will eat them.

Nageot won’t give up. Unwilling to pretend there’s nothing to be afraid of, and yet unwilling to be paralyzed by fear, he is determined to find a solution . . . and finally he does: They can all swim together, each in his or her own specific place, so that together they look like a gigantic fish and they will be safe from the big fish.

And in Egypt . . .

The people of Egypt stayed together in Tahrir Square in Cairo. They didn’t attack. They didn’t become violent. They didn’t hide. They didn’t withdraw. They simply stayed together. What a testament to the power of working together!

*Swimmy by Leo Lionni, copyright 1963, Pantheon Books, Random House, Inc. Copyright renewed 1991, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York and Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Although I’ve told you the story, the pictures and the visual involvement in the story are still well worth experiencing first hand.

A War Against Women . . .

06Feb2011 By Judith Barr

When is a political campaign (and I don’t mean an election) a guise for accomplishing something far more sinister and far more dangerous than is claimed?

When seeming attempts to save unborn lives in the name of something holy are really a war on women.

When apparent efforts to prevent abortion in the name of protecting the lives of the unborn are, in actuality, purposeful, planned moves to take away women’s power . . . a war against women.

When men, and most tragically of all, other women themselves, are so afraid of the power women have birthed and claimed in recent times, that they are bound and determined to turn back the times and make women powerless . . . a war against women.

When men, and even women, collude, under the guise of goodness, to make women possessions again . . . possessions of their fathers, possessions of their husbands, possessions of their religions, possessions of the Divine as they perceive the Divine, women making themselves the possessions of others, even women treating themselves like possessions . . . a war against women.

When men, afraid of the growing power women have claimed, and even women themselves are afraid of their own power and the power of other women, and instead of supporting that power and working through their own fears, want to squash that power forever . . . in a war against women.

Wherever else this is happening in our world, it is also happening right now in the United States of America in 2011.

It is rising to bizarre proportions! Last week, there was a bill in Congress that , under the guise of taking action to prevent abortions, would have redefined rape to include only forcible rape . . . and to leave women powerless when they are violated in other ways – by date rape, by rape that occurs when a perpetrator drugs his victim, by rape while a woman is intoxicated or asleep, by rape perpetrated on underage females,by rape when a woman withdraws her consent, or by rape when a woman is trying not to be injured further or is trying to stay alive.

Whatever this bill looked like it was doing, H.R.3, The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act was, in truth, a war on women’s power, a war on women’s protection, a war on women’s access to help . . . a war against women!

And this bill was one single action in millions that have been taking place and that will continue to take place.

A terrorizing war . . . against women!It’s like a daughter of an incest perpetrator who cuts her off from help in the family, isolates her from the outside world, threatens her loss of safety, threatens her daily survival — food, clothing, shelter, and medical help – squashes her voice, and most dangerous of all, puts on the face of kindness and goodness one minute, while stalking her silently and consistently, so that she is scared all the time.

I know that this is the backlash to the power women have been birthing, growing, and claiming. And I know a backlash was inevitable. We need to take this seriously now! This is a war against women.

If we are going to end this war against women, we – women and men alike – are going to need to do our own inner healing. All of us are part of this, whether we want to know it, acknowledge it, feel it . . . or not! This is no joke! I don’t mean just by reading self help books or going to support groups or even a workshop here and there. We are going to need to heal within us our own fears of being powerless, and also the places where we would take dangerous actions to crush someone else’s power because we are afraid.

There is much more that needs to be said, taught, and healed here than I can do in this short time and space. I hope, though, that I have opened your eyes to see what is really occurring, opened your mind to help you think about the truth of what is happening, and opened your heart to say ‘yes’ to the healing you, yourself, need to do. I also hope that you will pass this on to others . . . whose eyes, minds, and hearts need to open.

Thank you and many blessings,
Judith Barr

ARE WE GOING TO PUT OUT ANOTHER BRUSHFIRE? OR . . .

03Dec2010 By Judith Barr

TSA screenings and pat downs.
Our civil rights.
Wikileaks leaks.
North Korean nukes.
The economy.
Jobs – no jobs.
Houses.
Big Pharma.
Drug firms paying doctors.
Food safety.
What to do about Iran?
Social security.
Medicare.
Taxing whom?
Cutting taxes for whom?
Who gets the next bail out?
One election begins right after the previous one takes place.
Republicans or Democrats?
Right or Left?
Far left or Tea Partyers?
Women forced to wear red bracelets when menstruating!

One after another, we put out brushfires, trying to make everything better in our world.
We ask . . .
our doctors to do this for us
our teachers to do this for us
our clergy people to do this for us
our congress people to do this for us
our governors to do this for us
our presidents to do this for us
our media to do this for us
our military to do this for us
our money to do this for us . . .
and on and on and on.

When are we going to realize that at this level of our evolution, the only thing we can do in the outer world is put out brush fires . . .
and that we will be putting out brush fires forever, if we don’t take a leap of faith in our development …
if we don’t deal with the real cause of the forest fire that lives within each of us.
The forest fire of our own fear of our feelings, our own defenses against our feelings, our own denial of our feelings,
and our own wounds, both conscious and unconscious, burning to be healed.

ELECTIONS – YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW

14Nov2010 By Judith Barr

Why did the elections turn out the way they did? Not only this election season, but also . . . why do elections in general turn out the way they do?
Race? Incapability? Wrong direction? Lies and mudslinging? Corruption? Greed? Hunger for power? Change? Plain ole human nature?
Whatever you think . . . there is a deeper reason than most people know.

It is called transference.
In psychology – the psych part of PoliPsych – there is a dynamic called transference.
Boiled down to its essence, Transference is when you transfer onto someone or something in your life today a thought/belief/decision, feeling, sense, experience/memory, perception/interpretation based on an experience you had long, long ago in your childhood. . . particularly with people in your childhood who you experienced as authority figures. That could include your parents, the adults in your extended family, older siblings, adult or older neighbors, teachers, clergy people, etc.

People often think of transference as happening only in the therapy room. But the truth is . . .
we transfer onto others unconsciously and so very frequently, that we would be amazed to become conscious of when.

What in the world does this have to do with elections?

Just this:
We also transfer onto our leaders. Not just our educational and spiritual leaders, but also our political and governmental leaders.
We may transfer onto them negatively . . . thinking they are horrible people and leaders and not wanting them to lead us ever, let alone anymore.
Thinking they’re going to do terrible things that will hurt us, while pretending they’re doing things for our own good . . . like Mom or Dad did when we were little. We may be seeing them as Mom, who coddled us but didn’t teach us how to function in the world. We may perceive them like Dad, who pretended he and Mom were doing without and they were being generous with us, while he was really being stingy with us and hoarding things for Mom and him. We may feel they are like Grandpa, who lied to us and got our family into trouble; or Uncle Jim who was mean to the children but nice to the grown ups; or our older sister, who bullied us and lied to our parents to get us in trouble; or the teacher who punished us unfairly and played favorites with others. All of these early experiences may be transferred onto our leaders . . . and limitless others, too!

We may transfer onto them positively, or in an idealized fashion … thinking they are wonderful and can do no wrong, and will always take care of us well . . . blind to who they really are and what they are really doing, just like we were as tiny children with our parents.

In this past election . . . at the root of the situation was a deep, unconscious transference. The people elected in 2008 were seen, transferentially, as the good parents who would get us out of trouble . . . quickly . . . like with the wave of a magic wand. Since that wasn’t possible, and wouldn’t have been for any leader . . . on the young, transferential level, those same people are now experienced as the bad parents who didn’t do it right. And now the children are looking for new parents to take care of them.

How do we tell the difference between when we’re in transference with a leader and when our assessment of him or her is accurate?
To tell the difference to the core and in truth . . . we need to do our inner work with our own transference.
We need to find out if we’re transferring onto the specific leader and if so, who and what we’re transferring.
And then we need to do the work to resolve, dissolve, and heal the transference and the wound beneath it that drives it.
Only with the transference healed, will we be able to see clearly to choose and vote for leaders with clear seeing and knowing.
And only with the transference healed, will we be able to heal the whole process we have set up for choosing and electing our leaders.

We have a lot of work to do.
But it is so worthwhile to do it – for ourselves individually, for everyone in our lives that we affect, for our country, and for our world!*

© Judith Barr, 2010

*If you’d like help to explore your own transference, please feel free to email me at JudithBarr@PowerAbusedPowerHealed.com to explore the possibility of a consultation…and if you know others who would also like to explore theirs, I would gladly explore creating a workshop or group in which to do that.