"For all we know, she may have been bitten as a child, and a dog bark nearby causes her real and genuine disquiet and anxiety. She cannot go up and talk to the man, because of her fear of dogs. Catch22, THIS is why she is at council. In such cases, you might encourage a council worker going around to talk to the man, and maybe organizing everyone getting together to discuss the issue.
"Whatever way we do this is unimportant. The fact we do not buy into a vicious circle is what matters here. By staying detached, asking questions, and discovering the true concern the individual has, you EXPAND the circle of influence and embrace a greater ability to change. This way of dealing with clients will diffuse most, if not all, minor disturbances. You may eventually discover the guy does pose a problem and has a pitbull that is threatening the people in the street. But what you discover will be in YOUR circle of influence, not theirs.
"And so tell me, what is the great secret I have just told you?"
"Listen, don't buy the problem, just listen and hear it out." a young girl speaks up from the back of the group.
"Exactly. Listen, and then form a question based on what you heard. This has a profound effect on most people. First, it proves you have really listened. Second, it proves you are willing to help.
"Now we have some cards to practice with now. Each person gets one, and each card describes the council worker, and a person making a complaint. If you draw a council worker card, go and sit on the black seats over which there is a number. If you draw a complaint card, it will have the number on it, so you will go to that person and start your complaint.
"Have fun with this, don't take it too seriously. Just focus on listening and understanding. Off you all go." Sandy closes her discussion and sets them to a practical rehearsal.
"See, nothing to it. You are doing a great job," Mort says, smiling broadly. "I love the vicious circle idea. When did that occur to you?"
Sandy goes over and pours herself a punch. "It occurred to me as I went through the cards you had. Follows on from your "everything is a circle' speech. I figured some circles are not so much fun!" She laughs. Mort doesn't.
"Understanding what a circle is can only happen when you can grasp both ends of the argument that make it go round," Mort added, gazing out the window. "But more than this, we are talking true cause. If you throw a rock into a pond, a circle emerges, it is the ripple, the effect of the action. If you show someone a rock, and a ripple, they won't see the connection. The circle appears unrelated to the rock. The circle is part of the water, flowing, mobile. The rock is fixed, hard. But opposites like this always become bound together inside us because of cause and effect.
"We have an expanding circle. It reaches outwards, yet it is also Yin Yang. For all outward expressions, an equal and opposite wave flows inwards, towards the heart. Generally, people are so lost in the effect, they become removed from the cause. They completely forget the rock that was thrown into their pool of calm as a child, the rock that started ALL the problems. The waves it has created are now battering against their consciousness, and THIS seems their only reality. But they are divorced from the action that created them.
"This is what we term dislocation. Like that poor, numb girl you brought to me. You thought the kidnapping must be the issue, that seemed the likely cause of the shock the girl experienced. But the mother was also in shock, a deeper, more desperate state. Again, most would and did, presume this was the effect of the girl's condition. But it was the exact opposite. Seeing the true cause is an art. It requires a combination of logical and lateral thought.
"When I see a ripple in a pond, an expanding circle of effect, the first thing I think of is 'who threw the rock that created it?'. I saw the girl, the mother, and their circle of shock, and the first thing I thought of was 'Who or what instigated this effect?' What I did not think about was 'How can I cure this?' Can you tell me why I didn't think this, Sandy?"
"Your first principle: People heal themselves. Your second principle: We are the instruments of awakening, the ones who dive into the subconscious to find the rock that instigated the problem. It is our job is to point it out. We are here to personally connect the ripple of effect they are suffering to the rock inside them that created it. When people understand this, the ripples no longer control them. Your third principle: Once cause is established, the dis-ease inside the mind releases, and as all souls tend towards harmony, healing begins. The ripples on the surface then become calm, and the problem vanishes."
Sandy paused, quite tickled she remembered his basic principles so well. Then she added, "This is something that is easy to say, but hard to apply."
"Hard to apply? Only if you don't listen. The person is whispering their truth to you, you just have to hear their silent voice. But to hear that silence speak, you have to have perfect stillness within your own heart." Mort was going to say more, he looked at Sandy, he knew what the problem was. He saw it clearly, the moment he first met her. His problem was how to reach through all that training and rigidity, to get past that brilliant mind with all those walls and defenses.
He stopped, looked over at the people as they went through their scenes and laughed. "The people here are not bad people, but they are happy to be the effect of external circumstances. The paradox is, of course, that if you are happy to live in the effect of others, you can never be truly happy.
"The truth is Sandy, these people bore me. The next class exercise will be to spend tomorrow practicing it all in real time. They can supervise themselves and take notes as to how they figure things went. We may have helped them raise the consciousness an inch, but without us for fuel, the fire will go out soon enough."
"Such a pessimist. There's a couple of girls here who really seem to be taking it to heart. I have great hopes for them." Sandy retorted.
"The little blonde from accounts and the brunette from civil planning? They have the look of getting married and raising kids. Their only 'hope', though I despise that word, is that they will listen to their kids and raise the family IQ accordingly. But please avoid the word 'hope' around me. There is no 'hope', only expectation. We get what we expect, not what we hope for. And we can expect the best of ourselves only after we are prepared and organized for success. Ask yourself, are these people planning for success? No, they merely 'hope' for a good day, a life without much disease, and a decent spouse.
"These people are beige, Sandy. It's not an insult, it is an observation. They have contained their lives to small expectations and tiny wishes. It would be wrong of us to disturb the boat they are floating in too much, so I give them a paddle they can use. I give them some words that will fill their sails for a few days. This work we do might help the locals get on better with each other, and this is my intention - but as for lasting significant change? They have not suffered enough to want it."
Sandy snorted, "Good God that sounds pompous. If you gave lectures like that, no wonder so many of the faculty hated you!" She laughs, wondering what broadside will come her way. But nothing, silence. Mort is gazing out the window to some distant place. "Are you listening at all?" She asks.
In response, Mort starts nipping her with his thumb and forefinger, saying "Riddle me this. What am I? What am I?" He keeps playfully nibbling her with the thumb and forefinger, till she laughs, and gives up.
"I have no idea!"
Mort then shows the forefinger and thumb joined in a circle. "I am a vicious circle!"
Sandy laughs.
Mort just sighs. " Sandy my dear, I heard everything you needed to tell me the first time we met. Now it is time for you to hear yourself. Dismiss the class, give them the homework, and let's go visit your Mum."
Mum's House
She was short and Scottish, alive with bright blue eyes, a crinkly, always smiling face and a quick wit. "You'd be the fancy professor then?" she asked as they came in the door of the Little Eden cottage.
Mort laughed, "Common as muck, Mrs. Caruthers. Not one for fancy titles, but it does give me paying jobs that
allow me to bring your daughter over to visit."
"That it does," she says. "And I thank you for it, I do. You'd be wanting some tea I expect?"
"Aye, t'would be lovely it would." Mort responds, falling into the brogue she speaks as naturally as he puts on a pair of slippers. Sandy knows what he is doing, building rapport. She also knows her mother is not stupid and will know this, but she will be charmed that he would bother.
Sandy goes in to chat with her mother. She had been staying here the whole time but wanted to make every hour count. It's a long way from New York and her mother is not fond of visiting her there. It means being away from everything she knows. You can use Skype and pretend you are sharing, but twenty years apart is too long away. Sandy had been so busy building a practice, starting a business, and establishing herself in the inner circle of who's who in Psychiatry that she had no time to get back to England.
But now that she was here, it all stopped. Her mother had no interest in the work she did, but was happy her daughter was making a success of things. She had her garden, her friends, her quiet life. She had never remarried after her husband committed suicide. It was a terrible blow to the family, one she never spoke about, other than to say it often took more courage to live than to die. They had relied on family to get by after his death. There was little work in the 1960s in that area, and what there was paid slave wages.
Peterlee had died along with the coal industry. Sandy always supposed her fathers 'accidental' death was related to shame, but she had not once asked her mother about the true reasons. Perhaps now was the time. "Mums, you never said much about Dad, about what happened, why he did himself in. Did you want to talk about it?"
"Sandra my dear, there is water under the bridge that comes from life's tides, and there is water that comes from tears. Are you really sure you are wanting to know this?" Patty Caruthers looked at her sweet child, knowing the pain in store.
Sandy knew this was a warning. 'Don't upset the apple cart' and all that. "I would like to know what happened."
"Very well then." She clasped her daughter's sweet face for a moment, before dropping her hands and walking to a window. "Your father suffered from an affliction no one had a cure for. Yes, he had coal dust in the lungs, and probably would not have lived all that long anyways. But the evil that bit into him was inside his mind. It was the priests, my darling, they had their way with him, and he felt so guilty, so ashamed. He loved us, he really did, but he was haunted every waking moment by the nightmares.
"He would drink to put it to the background, then he would come home, drunk as you well know. I knew the pain, so I would gather him on my lap, in tears, both of us. A great powerful man like that, reduced to tears every night. He looked after us, I looked after him. The next day it was all forgotten, and whether he remembered the night before I can't say, but he was like a stone the next morning. Ashamed, I suppose, that he was so weak, believing that I judged him. Yet come that night, the whole cycle would repeat itself.
"Until that one night, just before you turned nine, the night he never came home to my lap. He took his bicycle to one of the mine shafts and 'accidentally' fell in. Death by accident meant the insurance covered him, a parting gift I suppose. And he wasn't the only one from these parts my love, not by a long shot. It is the saddest story, and I had no answer for him then, I have no answer for you now. Love was not enough to cure that shattered pride."
Sandy sat down in the kitchen where her mother prepared tea, saying nothing. This was something she had not rehearsed in her mind. There had been all sorts of scenarios she had been equipped with, with solutions to answer them, but this one had eluded her. It was not shocking, not even surprising, that he took his life now. She knew the pattern of abuse and how it played out. There had been dozens of cases she dealt with, where an abused child had transferred the pain to their loved ones. But she had remembered no such thing from her father.
She was eight when he passed away, and the only thing she remembered was his happy face, hugging her, telling her that she was loved. He had told her that the night before he died. It was such shock to her, to have him gone. It had been a greater shock years later to be told he did himself in. One of the local lads whose own father had 'fallen down a mineshaft' told her they did it to end things.
"To be fair, love," her mother continued, "he didn't have long for the world. The dust was in his lungs, and his breathing was bad. Add to it the smoking, the drinking, and the miserable weather, well he may have been gone by God's grace at any time. But we were under frightful pressure and were about to lose the house. I prefer to think he sacrificed himself to save us, and this is what I keep saying to myself whenever I feel the darkness wanting to close in."
She looked at the still face of her daughter. "Well, I have to be getting the supper. If there are questions, you can ask at any time. There's nothing to be hiding in this, your father suffered his life long, and in the end, it was a blessing for him. He suffered his purgatory here on Earth, and I have no doubt he was taken up to God when he left us."
Her mother left for the groceries, walking down to the local store. She always bought things fresh or grew them herself. Sandy sat in place, pondering. Then she remembered she had forgotten Mort was there in the front room. She shook herself free and went to make sure he was comfortable.
He was completely at ease, smoking of all things a pipe, just like her father used to. "You smoke a pipe?" she asked, incredulously.
"Well, this is the smoking room, isn't it?" He answered.
"My father used to smoke a pipe," Sandy says, not really focused. She was remembering that great round face, the huge smile, the smell of coal dust and the 'Come up on here my bubba. Give your old dad a hug.' A tear fell from her eye. No warning, it just fell out of her memories.
"There is a pin, right there," Mort comments. He doesn't buy into people's emotions, he wasn't buying into Sandy's. "An involuntary response is always indicative of a pin, a core principle that holds you in place. This is a good pin, it benefits you. It reminds you, in your dealings with people, of something or someone you love. What is it about your father you have subsumed and made part of yourself? What is the meme that is running your consciousness at this point?"
"Do you have to spoil EVERYTHING?" Sandy counters. She knew this game, the relentless pursuit. The client gives a queue, a signal, the psycho-therapist pounces, brings up that rock for the person to inspect. Then they show how that rock has caused innumerable ripples in the person's life.
Sandy gasps with realization. "You are treating me like a CLIENT?"
"What is it about your Father that forms the core beliefs that run you, Sandy? We will get to the next bit shortly, but can you identify the core Meme you inherited. We all do, you know this, but WHAT is it?"
"Self-sacrifice." Sandy had never seen it so clearly. Her father had died to save them, he sacrificed himself. Instinctively she knew it and must have known it as a child. Her mother knew it, she radiated out calm and self-sacrifice herself. She would do anything to help another that she loved.
"There is a second controller in your life, Sandy. A second pin. This is a bad one. What age did you come to America? Just out of Uni, you came to study your Masters with me, and get your Doctorate. You were twenty-four, so what is it. I will count backward. Twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one, twenty, nineteen, eighteen, sevent - " There is a sharp knock on the door. "Ah, seventeen, something interferes with you. The universe is never wrong. Ignore the door Sandy, this is more important. What is the PIN at age Seventeen?"
Sandy wanted to run to the door, and escape this intensity. She was frightened, for no reason. Her heart was racing, she felt trapped. She wanted to run, but she could not. She is PINNED to the spot, literally. Outside she hears a parcel being placed on the ground, the footsteps leave. Just a delivery man.
"Sandy, focus. What did the universe bring to you at age Seventeen?"
Something about his question penetrated the gloom in her heart. A ve
il fell from her eyes. It was here, in this room. Her uncle, the one always helping them out. Her mother was out, she was alone. He comes in drunk, asks her to come sit on his lap. It is wrong, there is something horrible about him. He orders her over. "Cum here love, you owe me a kiss for all I have done fer yer!"
Uncle Peter, her mother's brother, grabbed her, right here in this room. Suddenly hands are on her! She is shocked, distracted, the memory and hate of that bastard spilling out. She wants to scream, but instead, the calm eyes of her Professor are looking into hers. Mort is looking directly into her eyes, he has both hands around her face. What is this? He wants to KISS her? it's disgusting. She has to run, but she can't. Her legs won't move.
"You are in my hands, Sandy. You are safe. The phantoms of your past are fading, and the fear you feel is the vapor they leave as they evaporate. Look into my eyes, let it go. Let the fear go, let the panic go. You are safe, you are in my hands. I am your father in this moment, I am your safe place. Tell me what happened, release the demons."
She starts to cry. "He raped me, here, in this room." She is panting uncontrollably, sobbing as she relives the horror. She had never so much as kissed a boy, and he raped her. The blood, the pain, the slapping and the insults. 'ungrateful bitch, all I have done for you, and this one little thing I ask you refuse' and he penetrates her again, forcefully, anger and lust are driving him. He bends her over, and drives his member in from the rear, pushing hard. She is dry from fear, but then she starts to become wet. Some part of her LIKES this?
And then he comes. He is excited by her excitement.
It is disgusting. She is disgusting. She is a disgusting little WHORE. "If yer tell yer mother, there's no more help, you understand? If you speak, yer mother suffers. This was the least you could do to repay me for all I have done fer yer."
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