AnOddBox – But There Are…
“My Mommy Said There Were No Monsters. No Real Ones. But There Are.” Aliens 1986
I do not recall many memories of when I was a child… There is however, a memory that is vivid and has stayed with me for forty-three year… It was kindergarten… A class play about three goats and a troll… I was the troll… Under the table that staged the bridge, I waited for my turn… But there were eyes everywhere… Giggles and whispers… My face was hot… My heart was beating so hard… My eyes… I was starting to cry… And their eyes… They would see me cry…
When my part came, I could not come out… I was too afraid… I heard a growl that came from a face I had thought was pretty… She was angry… Her hands looked so big, as they reached under the table and grabbed my arm… She dragged me from my cave like I was a doll pulled from a box… She shook me… Her hands squeezing my arm… Why did she hate me…?
My arm… I felt her squeezing harder and harder…, but it did not hurt… It was my heart that was hurting… Not an emotional pain… My heart physically hurt like a pain I had felt before… Why were her hands hurting my heart…? She was a monster…
Forty-three years and I still remember this one memory of a five year old child… So why talk about this childhood monster…? I can talk for hours about horror stories of war, death, murder, homicide, and countless other monsters… Why the monster of a five year old…?
In my profession I can hear as many horror stories as I can talk about… The feelings are common… Why would the feelings not be common…? There are only a small amount of afferent feelings…, thus it would only stand to reason that feelings would be commonly shared… The emotions are also common… Why would the emotions not be common…? Actually this is a good question…
Emotions are labels identifying the association between feelings and a phenomenon… An event occurs…, our natural (and/or scripted) temperament responds…, we then associate the response to the event and label what we are experiencing as an emotion… But why would the emotions be common…? There are more emotion labels then I have wall space to cover… There are far more emotions than afferent feelings … As there are far less afferent feelings then emotion labels…, one might ponder on the duplication of afferent feelings in various associative emotion labels… With the ratio of afferent feelings to emotion labels I would tend to reason that the emotion label would have a degree of variability as the emotions would stem from each individual’s associative perspective… However, in the telling of the story…, the emotions are common… As I am a psychology nerd…, the commonality of feelings and emotions in the telling of a story…, is intriguing…
It is not unusual that a child’s monster will be told the same as the monsters of adults…
At times I take others on an imaginative journey into the mountains… We come across a bear and I ask…: What do you feel…? Unanimously the response is fear… Why are you afraid…? Because the bear can rip me apart and eat me…! Is the bear mauling and eating you…? No…, but it can… So are you afraid of the bear…, or are you afraid of the associative thought of what the bear might do…? The majority still tend to say the bear…, even when it is an imaginative bear… Oh the irony… Monsters in the imagination…
I took a trauma training course… As usual there was an example given of a gazelle experiencing a traumatic event… And…, as usual…, I questioned… Why do we use animals to try to explain human trauma…? I will concede that we humans do not fully understand the animal thought potential, but thus far the premise is that animals are governed by linear temperament responses… Animals are governed by instinct… Animals experience an afferent sensation and an efferent response… Animals do not experience trauma… Trauma is a human word with a human definition… Humans will experience the afferent sensation and efferent response, much as an animal…, but animals will instinctually move on, whereas humans…, with our limited mastery of meta-cognition…, ruminate the association…, and create monsters…
But these monsters are not real… Right…?
I was bullied a lot when I was young… As a response to being bullied…, I dreamed…, nightmares…, of being beaten… As a response to the monsters of my dreams…, I learned to fight… I became a Marine…, and I became strong… Lethally strong…
Many, many years ago I was unaware (Stage 1) of my temperament responses… Sure…, I was most definitely a thinker…, but a thinker that is not aware of temperament…, is still Stage 1… An individual attacked me at my place of work… At first it was just a fight… I hurt him pretty bad… Perhaps this is what made the intent change… The man became a monster…
I remember the thought… He wants to kill me… I remember the thought… I have to kill him… There are many deadly spots to hit a person… I only needed to choose one… And I did… I remember the commitment… The strike was perfect… His eyes glazed as he looked to be staring beyond me… A light perhaps… Then he fell… I became a monster…
Fortunately he survived… Hospital, jail, fines…, he faced a lot of consequences for his actions… As for me…? The revelation was a spark… A single second can take away a breath… The commitment…, can take away a life… The ignorance…, the unaware…, can create a monster…
Without awareness…, an event becomes a temperament experience… The consequences are uncontrolled… The consequences are…, well…, what-ever… When an individual commits to an action without the Prudence of consequence…, the commitment cannot be taken back simply because the individual is not satisfied… That which is created is created to live… It is Frankenstein’s monster…
AnOddBox topic: Are you aware of your temperament…? Are you creating monsters…?
Thank you,
Ronald E. Crampton, MA, LAC, LPC
AV Treatment Services, LLC dba
AnOddBox
PO Box 470396
Aurora, CO 80047
(720) 250-8432
Email: recrampton@avtreatment.com
Website: http://avtreatment.com http://anoddbox.com