By Elayne Savage, PhD
© Can Stock Photo / prettyvectors
I've been thinking a lot lately about the different forms of 'giving permission' and how I'm becoming painfully aware of the Dark Side that seems to be getting played out these days.
Giving Permission to ‘Make a Choice to Make a Change’ TM
For 35 years I have thought of 'giving permission' as wonderfully helpful in my work with workplace and psychotherapy clients.
Almost every day I have the opportunity to ‘give permission’ and I love to be able to help clients recognize that in tough situations they do have choices and can expand their options.
I try to give permission to let it be OK for clients to identify any blindspots they might have, reminding them “if they can’t see it, they can’t change it.” I encourage them to “walk alongside themselves, noticing and naming ideas, thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors –– and then imagining going back to the fork in the road and trying out a different path.” I encourage them to join me in teamwork to creatively try out some different thinking and behaviors.
Can they give themselves permission to ‘make a choice to make a change?’
I encourage clients to recognize that it's OK to have needs and not feel ‘needy’ or worry about being viewed as ‘needy. Can they try to define their needs by putting words to them? This can be a new experience if, when they were young, no one gave them permission to have needs. No one met the child's needs because the child was taking care of the grownups.
I remind them it may be a struggle at first to be able to know what their needs are and to say them out loud, but that’s OK . . . it is doable with some practice.
If perfectionism is holding someone back, I can work with them to keep their expectations realistic and giving themselves permission to experience success by doing a 'good enough' job.
I encourage clients to give themselves permission to check things out with the other person and not presume meaning or intent. This gives the other person permission to clarify and say, "That's not what I meant to say or I didn't mean for it to sound like that."
Here is a simple way to check things out:
"This is what I heard you say ______________.
Is it what you said?
Is it what you meant?"
By the way, the power of the ‘MeToo’ Movement is in the permission it gives to formerly fearful women and men –– move past the shame and choose to finally tell their stories of abusive experiences and traumatic memories, when to tell and how much to tell.
Lately a few clients have expressed the need to use some of our session time to talk about how recent Washington goings-on have been affecting them. It has to do with permission.
Most recently they are noticing the effect that so much negative ‘permission-by-example’ has been having on them – noticing their own increased tendency to tell half-truths or to exaggerate stories.
Maybe we are seeing the same kind of a ‘having permission’ dynamic when Joe Biden told a heart-warming anecdote about a war hero but appeared to combine details from several different events into one story. When questioned about the confusion in the details, he replied, “I don’t know what the problem is. I mean, what is it that I said wrong?”
My first thought is that I might be seeing the influence of very similar conflating and confusion of details that comes out of Washington. Could this modeling have given permission for Mr. Biden to feel it was OK to take some liberties with his stories, and in his justifications when questioned about it.
Giving Permission to Be Angry, to Hate, and to Create Violence and Turmoil
Recently I have become aware how ‘permission’ can surely be a double-edged sword with a scary Dark Side. When there are various kinds of encouragement for aggression we see almost daily there are headlines about verbal and physical violence, attacks, arrests because of online threats, and of course the recent horrific mass killings in Gilroy, Dayton and El Paso.
(Update: As I am writing these words, yet another mass shooting is taking place in Odessa and Midland Texas. Using an assault rifle he killed 7 and wounded 22 before he was killed by police.)
The Dark Side of perceived permission most often comes from the words and the 'winks and nods' of influencers.
However sometimes this perceived 'permission' comes feeling emboldened by previous violent acts and leads to copycatting. Often they are motivated by the appealing notoriety of headlines and 15 minutes of fame. Sometimes with a goal of breaking previous "kill" records .
And for some perceived 'permission' to commit violence is really a way to end their own life by getting shot by law enforcement.
Did you read about the man in Montana who assaulted a 13- year old boy
for not removing his hat during the national anthem?
The man described how he grabbed the boy by the throat, lifted him into the air and slammed him to the ground.
He fractured the boy’s skull.
The attorney for the man says President Trump’s “rhetoric” is partially to blame for his client’s actions. He was following orders from “his commander in chief” while attacking the teenager.
©Can Photo /robwilson39
Is it my imagination or are there actually more violent incidents because folks have come to believe they have permission to act out in aggressive ways? A nationwide review conducted by ABC News identifies at least 36 criminal cases where our President Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault. The majority of the cases (29 of the 36) reflect someone echoing presidential rhetoric.
I couldn’t help but notice a what appears to be a ‘call to action’ at various rallies during the 2016 campaigning — encouraging supporters to name-call and threaten and attack and kill.
Trump's 2016 campaign language has several times been criticized for promoting violence against political opponents.
- Donald Trump called for 'Second Amendment people" to bear arms and stop Hillary Clinton.
- Regarding speakers at the Democratic National Convention: “The things that were said about me. You know what, I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard. I was gonna hit this guy so hard, his head would spin. He wouldn’t know what the hell happened."
- And there was his legal fee promise In Cedar Rapids: "knock the crap out of them, would you? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”
- In a CNN interview with Jake Tapper on 7/24/16 Donald Trump, Jr. said:
“President Obama …should be ashamed of himself. If a Republican did that they would be calling for people to bring out the electric chair."
- And a New Hampshire state representative called for Hillary Clinton to be “put in the firing line and shot for treason” for her handling of the Benghazi terror attack. And by the way, the "lock her up” chants still continue.
Bear Arms? Hit DNC speakers 'hard'? Pay the legal fees of violent supporters? The electric chair? A Firing line?
Might these statements be perceived as ‘giving permission?’
"You aren’t just responsible for what you say;
you’re responsible for what people hear”
––– former CIA director Michael Hayden on CNN
These kinds of inflammatory statements can be confusing for folks who feel alienated and not heard or seen. Or for those with emotional or cognitive difficulties or for those who may be struggling with rational thinking, and prone to impulsivity and delusions.
We know from their social media postings that some are susceptible to embracing conspiracy theories. Some may be unable to differentiate what is real and what is not real: what is an exaggeration or a falsehood or what is only intended to be a dramatic distraction or a useful soundbite.
They might easily interpret an ill-considered, offhand comment to be a directive from their leader to be violent, to attack or kill. They may become delusional and begin to believe that bad things are good for them and for the country. They may start thinking destructively and commit dangerous acts or incite others to commit dangerous acts. And if they have access to guns or knives they would be putting themselves and others in danger.
Then this becomes a public health and public safety issue.
You may recall that Cesar Sayoc mailed homemade pipe bombs to 14 targets of verbal attacks by President Trump – including former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, major Democratic donors, and to CNN's offices.
The Sayoc family attorney tells Anderson Cooper how Cesar Sayoc seemed lost and needed help and “found a father in Trump. He was attracted to the Trump formula of reaching out, Trump reaching out to these types of outsiders, people who don’t fit in, people who are angry at America, telling them they have a place at the table, telling them that it’s okay to get angry.”
The attorney adds, “I believe that was a motivating factor.”
Not just for Sayoc but for the many others who embrace these kinds of suggestions which seem to give permission to tap into their dark side. These suggestions can be so appealing in fact, that some may even have coded meaning –– which might make them even more appealing.
And this kind of permission-giving may have influenced comments made by Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell who tweeted about Hurricane Dorian, "I’m rooting for a direct hit on Mar-a-Lago!" and wishing it would “shake up Trump’s climate change denial.” Later she did “sincerely apologize to all it offended.”
And this just in on Fox News 9/2/19: Brazil’s tourism ambassador Renzo Gracie, posted a video saying to French President Emmanuel Macron, "Come over here you’ll be caught by the neck, that chicken neck." which the press is interpreting as threatening to choke him. He also made an insulting sexual comment about his wife.
Am I the only one who notices similarities in the insulting tone of these tweets to some of the posts we see coming from the White House?
An Incendiary, Highly Controversial Move of Partisan Gamesmanship That Defies the Spirit of Democracy
And Prime Minister Boris Johnson, too, may be replicating attitudes and behaviors we see coming from the White House. The British Prime Minister in a “highly controversial move of partisan gamesmanship” asked Queen Elizabeth II to suspend Parliament. Johnson's move is “extraordinary because it is so incendiary.”
The queen has tried to stay out of politics and his request is so far the closest the monarch has come to getting stuck in ‘the Brexit quagmire.’
“Suspending Parliament for political reasons is extremely unusual but not completely unheard of. The Queen may advise or warn a leader, but it is essentially unheard of for her to reject the agenda of the U.K.'s head of government.”
Johnson put her in “an unprecedented bind, having to choose between rejecting royal protocol or approving what Johnson's critics say is a blatant power grab that defies the spirit of British democracy.”
So, caught in a double bind, the Queen said yes.
https://fortune.com/2019/08/28/boris-johnson-queen-parliament-suspend-brexit/
I’m not trying to make a political statement here, but the often dark consequences of perceived ‘permission’ seems important to call attention to. So important, in fact, that I had to start from scratch rewriting this blog when a few days ago my first draft iPhone Notes disappeared and two Apple Advisors weren’t able to retrieve them.
And then again, maybe I’m just imagining that all these examples are really describing ’’giving permission.’
Let me know what you think . . .
And some of you may be interested in this study analyzing 53 years of mass shooting data showing attacks aren’t just increasing, they’re getting deadlier. Mass shootings have increased from claiming an average of 5.7 lives per year in the 1970's to an average of 51 deaths per year now.
© Elayne Savage, PhD
Until next month,
Elayne
Elayne Savage is the author of ground-breaking relationship books published in 9 languages.
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