On camaraderie

The rape and death of Jill Meagher in the last fortnight has brought to our attention some things we take for granted in Australia: that it’s not safe in the streets late at night when you’re walking home on your own, especially if you’re a woman. Now, lets assume that we have only just realised this, what now? Yes, we could focus in about how unfair it is that a bad person went and hurt an innocent woman, or focus in about Australia become more unsafe than we previously thought it was. But I wonder if this realisation could in fact serve to inspire positive change, and in fact inspire something that becomes ingrained into our culture and our human social conscience: camaraderie.

When we realised that climbing mountains was dangerous, we went on to recommend spotters. We have spotters when we bench-press weights. We recommend hiking partners. Essentially most activities and sports that have an inherent sense of danger in it make use of the “buddy system”, where one or more people in a group mutually monitor and assist each other. Now, in some cultures the concept of mutually caring and helping the other doesn’t need a name, it is a social expectation. Looking after and caring about and for our friends is a social responsibility most people take on themselves even if they weren’t directly taught it by schools or families. But perhaps the time has come for us to be actively teaching this concept, maybe even as a (social) health promotion strategy.

There are some places in the world that have a higher incidence of crime than others, but even in the “safest” of places, there are still times when crime is more likely to occur than others. A lot of violent crimes happen at night. A lot of crime occurs where they are lots of people gathered. A lot of crime occurs in the context of alcohol or drugs… And so finally back to why Jill Meagher’s tragic story made me think of all this. Of course she did not deserve what happened to her. And of course none of the friends she went out with did anything wrong; they only did what seemed normal to them. And my proposition is that we as a society promote a new kind of normal. Her friends may have offered to take her home and she may politely refused, but rather than place blame on anyone other than the criminal that killed her, I propose we learn from this story and make some changes to prevent other people suffering the same fate as this woman. Lets make camaraderie as common as going out and having a fun time with your friends. Lets promote a social responsibility amongst people, friends we go out for a drink and a laugh with at least. Have it as a rule, even if it’s no longer an instinct in our society, that we care for the people we hang out with when we go out.  That we care from the minute they leave to go hang out with us, and that we care enough also to ensure they get back home safely.

On excuses, reasons, and choice

I met someone some time ago who had some personality features I didn’t quite like. We were close for a time and so I told her that some of the things she did bothered and sometimes even hurt me. She told me that it was all because that’s just how she was, that that’s how she had turned out after been raped as a teenager by her father. Of course, that is a terrible thing to happen to anyone and I know it takes a lot of courage to tell your own story. And, of course, I also realise that childhood sexual abuse really does mess you up in so many ways! The strangeness of this particular situation was that this friend said to me fairly often “that’s just how I am” and reminded me about her father. I knew; I wasn’t going to forget what she had told me – it was something deeply serious! However, after so many times that she told me that that’s how she is and it’s due to the childhood sexual abuse she had suffered, I remembered that she wasn’t the only person this had happened to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very sad and disturbing thing and every single person this happens to will experience it differently and will be affected differently by it in the long-term. However, I felt that with me she was using it as an excuse for her behaviour so as to avoid apology, or – God forbid – change.

I have known a very many people who have been sexually abused as children and not everyone was as mean as this ‘friend’ was to me; they weren’t obligated to be mean by reason of their terrible experiences. When I remembered this, and at the last straw with this friend, I walked away from it all. Yes, I know that people with histories of abuse in childhood are more likely to have a personality disorder in adulthood than those who never had those experiences. And yet I also believe in the human potential for change. I know that you can take away every choice from a child when he is abused. I also know that at some point a child becomes and adult and all adults have the choice to continue to be victims to the past or to progress from there. It’s a choice. My friend wasn’t without awareness of how her personality and the things she said and did hurt others (myself included), and she was a very smart woman academically and creatively. When I told her that something she did or said hurt me, she didn’t say “I’m sorry. I will try not to do it again”. No, she would say, “that’s just how I am. You know with what my dad did to me”. Yes, I knew that. I also knew he wasn’t currently doing that her; she was no longer a victim, she was just choosing to continue to wear the victim cloak as an excuse not to alter her adult behaviour. Finally, it hurt me too much to continue to be her friend when she found it easier to say “this is how I am” than to alter her behaviour to prevent hurting those that were simply trying to be a good friend to her.

On friendship / giving and receiving

You know what is a good friend? A friend that is always giving (of their time, attention, efforts, etc). You know what is a bad friend? One who always seems to be taking and taking and never giving anything (usually material things) in return. What do you call a person who sometimes gives, but just doesn’t seem to take anything at all from you? I don’t know, but they’re not usually called a friend. 

I used to wonder some time ago why I was never the kind of friend my ‘friends’ called on to help get them out of a tight spot, to lend them money, or just to vent  when everything crashed to pieces. Often I would hear through other mutual friends about how their relationships had broken up, they had won an award, or they’d been in a minor car accident, etc. I was often left with this little numb wondering of ‘why didn’t they tell me?’ or ‘why didn’t they call me?’ And I would feel a little rejected and sad to have been left out of a kind of major life event. I would recede into myself and wonder: 'am I such a bad person that they wouldn’t think to tell me?, to ask for my help?; or do they not like me?, am I considered of no use?' As you can see, I was aiming these comments toward myself mostly rather than the other person. And as I thought about these things, I began to distance myself from these ‘friends’ of mine. I questioned our whole relationship, and the feeling of rejection did not do my self-esteem any good.

Still, I could never figure out why I was never the friend people sought for when people I considered friends needed “a friend”. Until one day I figured it out: I never called any of my alleged friends when things, semi-major events, happened in my life. I either receded into myself and put up the fight (or celebration) on my own, or I spoke only to my mother about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t find my friends worthy of the knowledge or of sharing my victories or defeats, it was more to do with pride, I guess. "You want to have nothing in life that you’re proud of? Let yourself be guided by your pride." Pride is like a fear of falling, so it stops you from reaching too high. Healthy pride, good pride, is probably better called gratitude and self-efficacy. Good pride is an after-the-fact quality; that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean more the pride/fear to be seen as vulnerable, as needing, as wanting, as human. One day I read that to have good friends, you have to be a good friend. I always thought I was a good friend, willing to give to others when they were in need, listening when they needed to be heard, sharing some advice, looking out for their wellbeing, etc. But my friends were never there when I needed something not because they were bad people, but because I was too proud to let them in.

There’s a bible verse that says that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving. Sure, but we all know that there is also something very pleasant in receiving!  That’s right, there is happiness in both. And what any good relationship, any friendship or partnership, needs is both giving and receiving. Sometimes we give our friends a present, something to cheer them up or make them feel good. We feel good in return, right? A happy friend means a happy me, means a healthy relationship. But how about sometime letting our friend also share in the happiness of giving, allowing them give us a gift, being grateful for their effort, validating their efforts and gesture of camaraderie? Of course, I am not talking just about material gifts. I mean allowing ourselves to be human, to admit our need and desire of friendship, of companionship, of another human being to share our load and cheers with. Trust me, if you know anything about human pride, this is actually very hard! We become proud, stern, often as a result of being hurt in the past, or disappointed. We want to convince ourselves and others that we can’t be hurt again. We want to block out the bad – and we end up blocking out the good too. We punish ourselves and others by creating a wall of perceived invincibility. But it’s actually easier to be invincible if you have an army of comrades rather than take the world on by yourself.

So what more can I say to encourage you to be a little more vulnerable, a slightly better friend? You are human, don’t be scared to be mistaken for one. And there’s a paradoxical rule with love: it’s the only known substance that the more of it you give away, the more you end up having.

On ‘childish’ people and abuse

I met a lady in Chile who asked me if I knew why some people are just so childish. She was talking about members of her own family, and I guess she asked me because she thought I might have learnt something about this in my psychology classes. I didn’t. I had read a little about post-abuse syndromes, though (e.g. the child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome). Now, an example of the “childish” behaviour she was talking about is two adult siblings bickering and maybe even physically confronting each other, divulging each other’s secrets in order to offend or hurt the other, pitting other family members against each other, etc. Immature behaviour? Yes. Childish? Maybe not the best word to use; children often lack the noxious intent adults seem to use. There are many adults, though, who having the skills and abilities of an adult, behave (and usually also think) as children.

I don’t mean adults acting like children in a derogatory way. I mean adults acting in “immature” ways, as in the mature versus immature coping mechanisms psychology tells us about. For example, say someone cuts you off in traffic. The mature thing to do is acknowledge you’ve been wronged, but given that the situation is fleeting and didn’t result in greater harm, you acknowledge your emotion (anger, sadness, etc.) and move on. The immature thing to do is to scream your head off at the other driver, maybe tailgate him, maybe become physically abusive if you get the chance to. The reason it would be an immature thing to do is because the reaction is disproportionate to the slight – and because you didn’t exercise self-control in response to the emotion you felt. OK, so there are immature and mature behaviours or responses that are designated as such by social norms, moral and psychosocial values, prevalence rates, etc. Now, the very same things that determine whether a behaviour is a mature or an immature response usually have to be learnt – and often in childhood. You can see this way that if you didn’t learn these things in childhood, how to behave “maturely”, the only way you know to respond is in a child-like manner: instinct and survival based, with immediacy, and without regulation of affect.

One of the things I remember reading about children who are abused (whether emotionally, physically, sexually, or whatever other horrible way we have to inflict suffering) is that their emotional development is gravely stunted. These children will have normal psychosocial and cognitive development until the point where they encounter the abuse, then will often remain in that stage of psychocognitive development until adulthood. You can see, therefore, how it follows that individuals that behave childishly are doing so because that is all they know. They react and act like a child because they haven’t learnt any other way to be. Of course, on the receiving end of it, when you as an adult encounter these people who are also physically adult like yourself, you expect them to act like you would and when they don’t we label them as childish.

So that is what I told my friend in Chile, that that at least was my understanding of how some people act the way they do. But in telling this story, you also must think about the people that have the background of childhood abuse and who have learnt to behave more maturely than a child would.

Abuse tends to rid us of many choices, of many liberties and human rights, and especially in childhood can be absolutely shattering to a person. But for those that are fortunate enough, to have escaped childhood abuse and reached a plateau into adult life, there is one choice, one moment of insight, that is all-empowering: making the choice of continuing to be the abused child of the past or becoming the adult that takes responsibility for his/her future experiences. Of course, I am trivializing a lot of things, and sorting through the behaviours and thought patterns of previous abuse victims, identifying the cognitive errors that have been laid down over repeated exposure to abuse, and eventually changing these behaviours, can take years (if ever achieved). The hardest thing to do isn’t doing all the cognitive work, however, it is that first step: believing that you, even you as a victim of abuse, now have power to decide to change things. To me, the difference between two people who have suffered childhood abuse, one who is mature and one who is immature in his interrelational style is that one of them had a moment of insight when he finally understood the words:

“You’re not powerless. You are not sick. You did not deserve what you got, but things can be better.”

Now, my friend in Chile is a very mature, very humble, and very loving person. When I told her about how some of these ‘childish’ people possibly had a troubled childhood, and are possibly cognitively and emotionally stuck there through little fault of their own, she bowed her head down as if remembering some distant memory only she knows about and told me how she really did feel sorry for her family members, even if they did act so negatively and immaturely towards others. And I guess that’s the other point I wanted to make, that perhaps instead of been irritated by these “childish” people, we take a moment to reflect on how sad their lives have probably been.